


By Any Other Name (Charybdis)

by Half_SubmergedinPurgatory



Category: Naruto
Genre: Aged Up Chunins Because !??!!?? Now They're 16, Animal Traits, Antagonists to Friends to Antagonists again to Lovers, Bijuu are Chakra Monsters but also Demonic Entities, Bijuu are Siblings That Never Want a Family Reunion Ever, Genderfluid Uzumaki Naruto, Healthy Grieving Naruto (Eventually), Kurama and Naruto Sharing More Than Just Headspace, Kurama's Animal Concept of Having a Good Time, Kurama’s Animal Concept of Emotional Stability, Memories of Kushina and Mito, Mental Health Issues, Mid Canon Divergence, Multi, Naruto Can’t Lie but Luck and Shikamaru Give him Plausible Backstory, Naruto Ruining Carefully Laid Plans Because he Wants to be Involved, Naruto is a Naru-hoe, No Kaguya Plotline, Occasional Crack Bc Lets Be Real This Is Naruto, Red-Haired Uzumaki Naruto, SEAL tattoos, Seal Master Naruto, Self Destructive Kakashi (Always), Time Travel, Uzu Chakra Sensing, Uzushishio Secrets, possessive kakashi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-02-26 18:40:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18722731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Half_SubmergedinPurgatory/pseuds/Half_SubmergedinPurgatory
Summary: Naruto never had much growing up. Even later, he only managed to keep hold of one thing. His name, his history, his sense of self. Time eventually managed to take that from him, too. But he gets something back for it.He gets more time. He gets the chance to change everything.Unfortunately for him, Naruto has absolutely no idea where to start.(Shikamaru always said the best laid plans never survived contact with enemy)





	1. Descent Into Maelstrom (Part 1)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, hello! This is a mid-canon divergence splitting off sometime after the Sasuke recovery mission, after which I dump canon in a blender and keep only the parts that float to the surface prior to time travel shenanigans. 
> 
> This is inspired by blackkat's time travel verse and I'm mostly playing it by ear.

_“Naruto Uzumaki.”_

That’s how it always started with him. How everything started.

The first thing he was ever told in this life was his name. They were his first words ( _spoken later than most children to the one man who was willing to listen_ ). One of the few things taught to him with care.

It was fitting, probably, that every situation he got into from that point forward began or ended with those words ( _he’d lived for that, once. That angry cry - an affirmation. He existed. Despite it all, he existed_ ). It was fitting that he’d eventually leave them behind ( _with everything else that he cared about_ ).

He’d love them first, though. He’d love them like only a lonely child could ( _his to have, his to give up, his to **choose**_ ).

________

_“Naruto Uzumaki, future hokage!”_

Genin by 14, almost chūnin by 16, traveller until he hit 18, and soldier from that point forwards ( _even if no one called him that, even if no one wanted to acknowledge what they’d asked him to be_ ). Jinchuriki throughout it all.

There was a time he’d thought about having a different name. Not that he’d wanted to give his up. But Sasuke has wanted to revitalize his clan, and Naruto Uchiha didn’t sound so bad at 15.  
  
Not when Sasuke said it with so much determination ( _with love just a shade too dark, unmistakable despite the lust for vengeance that curled around it like a cat in the sun_ ).

Even if what happened hadn’t happened, Naruto thinks he would’ve kept Uzumaki if they got married. He might’ve even passed it on to their kids.  
  
It’s the only part he got to keep, in the end.

  
________

 

“Naruto Uzumaki, the kyuubi Jinchuriki.”

The forest seems to tilt at a sickening angle as Naruto tries to look at the man speaking to him. His feet cling to the bottom of a branch unnaturally and his hair doesn’t hang with gravity. Everything about the image is wrong.

Naruto had heard his name spoken in that tone a thousand times since birth. Flat, unaffected, like he was just dirt beneath someone’s shoe. He’d even heard it presented like that - Jinchuriki - a handful of times since he turned 16. Since the chūnin exams.

Since Sasuke turned his back on their shared dreams and left ( _taking his promises of another name with him_ ).

He’d even heard that exact tone and title in combination before ( _a snake whispering curses_ ). It didn’t hurt him much anymore, not when so many other people said his name the way he’d always wanted to hear ( _amused, patient, familiar_ ).

He’d never heard Sasuke say it like  **that** , though.

_“Naruto Uzumaki, the **kyuubi**   **Jinchuriki**.”_

Something burned impossibly hot and dark in his stomach. The complete opposite of the feeling he’d come to associate with Sasuke ( _shafts of morning light sliding through his dusty windows, falling on Sasuke’s long pale fingers clenched on Naruto’s shirt as he slept, keeping him possessively close-_ ).

He closed his eyes and pushed it away. He believed in Sasuke. He’d  **promised**.  
  
( _How long had he waited for this? This wasn’t how he’d pictured it)_

“Bastard.”

He greeted, a grin slanting across his face despite everything. The darkness in his chest squirmed as he scanned the forest _(where was Jiraiya? Why wasn’t he back yet?)._ The Sound nin who had stumbled across them earlier had probably just been a distraction for...this.

Whatever **this** was.

Sasuke stepped down from the trees, finally back on the level most humans walked. Naruto’s neck thanked him for the change in angle even as the hairs on the back of it raised _(the chattering of locust pods on the trees sounded eerily like birds_ ).

Against the sickly yellow light of the setting sun, Sasuke was just a dark smudge. His slow approach gave away as little as the shadow cast over his features.

It betrayed a patience Naruto didn’t have ( _one Sasuke had never had, either. Always rushing, even in the way he’d take Naruto’s hand, even in the way he’d brought up forever after only a few weeks of something Naruto hadn’t been able to identify because no one ever taught him the words and Sasuke hadn’t loved like other people loved_ ). He took the last few steps between them himself.

A pleased hum slipped free of Sasuke’s expressionless mouth _(always grunting instead of talking, then ranting instead of chatting, going from zero to one hundred faster than even Naruto could_ ).

 “You’re mine.”

Sasuke said, the words sounding like a proclamation, as he moved into Naruto’s space. His gaze was unwavering as ever, passionate despite the chill in his eyes, and Naruto’s breath caught.

“You left.”

Naruto responded lowly. His voice feels too loud in the quiet of the forest ( _the wind had halted. With it, everything else did too. Only the racing of his heart remained_ ). He felt like he should be saying more ( _how long had he been waiting for this moment?),_ however whatever joy he’d thought he’d feel is tempered by **something** that weighs his tongue down like lead.

“Of course I did.”

Sasuke tells him, haughty as ever, and Naruto nearly laughs past his building frustration,

“And you chased me. You’re meant to push me to greater heights. You’re meant to chase me to the ends of the Earth.”

This is familiar, even if it’s weird. It’s almost comforting. Sasuke’s little speeches were always a little creepy, if Naruto was being honest. Aways too much ( _Uchiha, a fan for flames, one that never stopped beating_ ).

Usually he appreciated that, but...

“You’re my best friend.”

Sasuke was saying, cupping Naruto’s face with one black-nailed hand. His expression was all wrong.

( _Something was wrong_ )

There was still love in it, though, and Naruto had been fighting instinct for the better part of his teens ( _running toward instead of away from the things that could hurt him_ ). He’d had to fight it to experience even a scrap of the recognition ( _love, love, love_ ) he craved. So when Sasuke leaned in for a kiss, Naruto didn’t pull away.

( _There’s a darkness burning in his stomach_ )

( _It takes a second before he recognizes it_ )

( ** _Malice_** )

( _For the first time in his life, Naruto and the fox’s emotions are perfectly in sync_ )

________

 

It goes like this: one of his many names falling from familiar lips. Not only Naruto ( _Uzumaki or Uchiha_ ), but Jinchuriki.

( _A familiar name from familiar lips, but not like this. Never like this_ )

    It goes like this: a flicker of malice, a moment where the monster within breathes just like he does, feels just like he does, and an electric kiss  
    ended by a hand through his chest.

     ( _The chirping of birds drowned out by locust pods shaking in a great gust of wind_ ).

          It goes like this: Sasuke doesn’t kill him, but he tries. He always tries.

________

 

When Naruto first left to train, everyone had assumed he’d be back soon. Few said a proper goodbye ( _Sakura, tears of frustration in her eyes, asking for a promise. Asking for hope. Asking too much_ ). Some regretted it after two years passed by without even a whisper. Some didn’t - Shinobi were often gone longer.

Shikamaru hadn’t let himself feel much of anything at all ( _too used to holding Naruto as a constant despite his annoying penchant to surprise - he hadn’t let himself linger on the idea of him not being there. Couldn’t let himself linger on it, lest all his other carefully held realities fell apart_ ). And then Jiraiya crashed through the gates he was guarding, exposed forearms coated in vicious chakra burns, with Naruto hanging limp and bloody and red-red-red in his grip.

A hole seared into the skin right over his heart.

“Sasuke.”

The name tumbled from his mouth before let the implications really sunk in.

Before he could even notice the Lichtenberg figures spidering over Naruto’s face and neck. Before he saw any evidence of lightning chakra.

All he needed to see was the positioning of that hole.

Right over Naruto’s heart.

“Bastard.”

He hissed. 

________

 

Time often skipped over Kakashi ( _a badly scratched record on repeat, each drop of the needle digging it deeper_ ). It rushed by on missions, a wind that never ceased blowing, and carried him swiftly to whatever end he meant for ( _soon, soon, but never soon enough_ ). Then it crawled to a stop the second his apartment door closed and he found himself with no one to be but himself.

With two students absent and one remaining, damaged in ways he had no idea how to address ( _how did one begin to mourn someone who wasn’t dead, but might as well be? Someone who would never love you back because they love the only teammate you have left? Someone whose love was toxic and deadly?_ ), it skipped even more violently. Jarringly. It only seemed to move normally when he knelt by the memorial stone and let himself sink into thought.

Time had been slow again recently ( _painfully so, dragging at him, making him feel older than he was_ ). Then Shikamaru flew by him with uncharacteristic speed, gaze fixed on the hospital with uncharacteristic intensity, and Kakashi’s heart lurched as time ripped it forwards.

“Naruto.”

He whispered ( _because only one thing moved the immovable in Konoha_ ), rising to his feet,

“No.”

________

  
Waves of dark red chakra rose and fell in time with Naruto’s chest. Sharp teeth snapped at healing hands. Amber eyes blazed with ill-intent before rolling backwards in a dead faint. Nothing about this was going right.

Tsunade’s hands were scalded raw by the time a gnarled scar filled the hole over her grandson’s heart. It spiraled like a tree knot as two opposing forces fought to fix a wound that never should’ve happened ( _a swathe of_ _unbroken tan skin interrupted by inflamed pinks and callused whites_ ). She wasn’t sure who had done a better job; herself or the kyuubi.

She wasn’t sure why the kyuubi had bothered with healing at all. It had seemed seconds from crawling right out from Naruto’s skin to kill her for even trying ( _a whisper in the back of her head, a whisper that had always kept her alive, thought that the scarred tissue belonged to the kyuubi. That it had fought her to **scar** Naruto. It was troubling_).

One of her smartest chunin sat outside the hospital door with gritted teeth ( _and questions she, without a doubt, would be unable to answer to his satisfaction. This was beyond her. She was so tired of…of this_ ) and the other hovered by the window with an expression she was too exhausted to unpack. If neither of them were doing their regular bullshit routines, the entire situation was worse than she’d let herself think.

She rested her hands back over Naruto’s scars and tried to will them away ( _a flicker of doubt: what if they were her fault? What if the kyuubi’s healing could’ve proceeded without her? He’d never scarred before. He’d been her clean slate_ ). Then Tsunade snatched them back, cradling water in her palms to soothe the sting of yet another burn.

Naruto’s eyes flicked open. Amber, blue, amber, blue. He snarled like an animal.

A rustle of leaves and Kakashi was gone ( _damn coward, why’d he even come-_ ). At the noise, Jiraiya finally lifted his head from his hands and dragged a sheaf of sealing paper towards himself ( _exhaustion evident in every movement, pain lining the delicate his of his scalded arms_ ).

“Ah, I can finally think without his personal stormcloud threatening to get my papers wet. Joy to the world.”

Jiraiya joked weakly. Tsunade sat heavily next to him and rested her head against the wall ( _Kakashi was emotional enough that Jiraiya could feel it, sensors be damned, but she couldn’t see it. Emotional enough to wipe his body language completely clean. If something in the city wasn’t broken beyond repair within an hour, she’d eat her hat_ ).

Shit. Being hokage was shit.

The kid had better survive to take the position away from her.

 

________

 

A rusty laugh.

“Huh, I’m not dead.”

Jiraiya snorted himself awake. Instantly, he was snapping his head up to stare at his godson. As he took stock of Naruto’s lucid demeanor _(picking at his nails with a forced smile_ ), he surreptitiously sent one of his toads to alert Kakashi. The bastard probably wouldn’t show his face, but Jiraiya was a good enough sensor to know he’d been here twice since he first fled ( _he would want to be here the second his old student, old because he was Jiraiya’s now and he wasn’t giving that up even with this disaster, was conscious_ ).

“You’re not.”

He agrees uneasily, a little unsure of how to proceed ( _of where to tread_ ). He’d only ever loved one woman in his life and he’d never gotten to form a real relationship with her, let alone found himself betrayed by her so completely.

He’s steeling himself for tears when he gets something else entirely.

“The Fox can sense negative emotions, right?”

Naruto says, shifting and beginning to tug off his hospital gown before Jiraiya can so much as blink at the nudity.

“It gets to me through hatred. That’s what it’s called, yeah? Demon - it’s made of hatred.”

His gaze skips over the knot in his chest entirely. Instead Naruto brushes tentative fingers over where the seal would be visible if it were activated.

“That’s...not wrong.”  
  
Jiraiya admits, a concern beginning to rise in his mind as Naruto’s fingers press deeper into his skin ( _browns bleeding white, a colour that only took hold in the center-)._ He flinches as he feels Kakashi’s chakra flicker silently into the shadows ( _the tension Kakashi has been carrying makes thickens the atmosphere without the other nin even making himself known – it’s takes all Jiraiya can do to stop himself from snatching Naruto’s hands away from his belly_ ).

“Before Sasuke kissed me...”

Naruto’s hands lift to brush their fingers against his bottom lip. Jiraiya winces ( _because he hadn’t known that. He hadn’t been there until he’d felt the kyuubi’s corrosive energy. He hadn’t **known**_ -), but his student keeps talking.

“I felt it. Malice.”

Naruto’s fingers pull down his lip and prod at his long canines. He has to know - there’s no way Jiraiya will be able to hide the extent to which the fox had controlled ( _changed_ ) his body from him. He still feels like he has violated Naruto and Minato’s trust, changing the seal as he had, but at least Naruto would see why it was necessary-

“It saved my life. I knew he was going to hurt me and I moved.”

Kakashi is gone again. Jiraiya wishes, uncharacteristically, that he could go with him ( _he’d spend a solid week with Kakashi’s sulking if it meant avoiding this_ ).

“Less than an inch to the right, neh, Ero-sennin?”

Naruto asks. His slightly pointed pupils are near-pinpricks and the smile on his face sits oddly over the bulk of too-sharp teeth.

A rusty laugh.

Naruto breaks down and cries.

( _Jiraiya says nothing. He doesn’t know where to start_ )

________

  
The next time Naruto wakes up, the room is empty. Just like him. There’s something silent and slow, something placid, where a seething darkness had always taken root. Brushing against it felt like sinking to the bottom of a perfectly clear lake.

The complete silence of it threatened to pull him in.

The Fox was buried at the bottom of it, probably. Buried so deep Naruto couldn’t feel it at all. Couldn’t hear an echo of its voice.

The quiet was unnerving.

In the seconds before he’d blacked out, a thought had gripped him with enough intensity he’d never forget it: the Fox was  **something**. It was alive.

It felt what he felt. Malice - malice from the person threatening them and...

And their own.

For a single second, he’d wanted to live worse than he’d wanted anything in his life. He’d wanted to make sure Jiraiya and Kakashi didn’t lose another student, that Tsunade wouldn’t lose another family member, that he could keep his promise to Sakura another day-

He’d been willing to hit first. Viscerally willing. And the Fox had felt that.

Echoed it.

There had been no lines between its desires and his. They’d felt in the exact same way. Which shouldn’t be possible, because he didn’t hate Sasuke. He wouldn’t have killed him.

But the Fox would have. It was a demon. It was **made** of hatred.

Still...the idea stuck. The idea stuck and it made the Fox’s silence unnerving. Because all living things had voices and names. A voice ( _a sign, a seal, a character_ ) to present a name. It was what you  **were**.

And the Fox was quiet where it had never been before ( _a seething mass, sometimes softened by sleep, more often thickening with curls of murderous intent_ ).

Voiceless.

If the Fox was sealed...what parts? How did one seal something named? How did you restrain the very essence of something?

In not wanting to think about what had happened, in not wanting to dwell on the knot in his chest, Naruto found something else to obsess over.

( _Was the Fox’s name printed in the lines Jiraiya had inked into him?)_  
  
( _Was his?_ )

  
///////

  
It goes like this: as a genin, wet behind the ears and with nothing better to do, Naruto wanders Konoha. He watches the people interact and wonders when he’ll be able to join them. He looks out for familiar faces.

Kakashi is easy to spot when he isn’t actively avoiding being seen. Admittedly, he’s usually avoiding being seen. It makes finding him easily all the more interesting and so, without thinking about it, Naruto creeps closer.

Kakashi’s book was nowhere in sight. Neither was Gai, stirring up some bizarre chaos.

In Naruto’s experience, Kakashi acting like a normal person meant he was uncomfortable or receiving serious news. Either of these would’ve made Naruto leave once he was older, but at the time? Both were juicy tidbits for unraveling the mystery behind his jounin sensei.

There was a kunoichi, fingers curled in Kakashi’s flak jacket ( _Kakashi standing still enough to let her_ ), with her brows drawn in determination.

“We could be good together.”

Naruto just barely manages to hear her say.

“You’ve been alone for years. And I-“

Her eyes flick down to glance at Kakashi’s mouth beneath the mask,

“I’ve always thought about it. A-about you. You’re the best of us, Hatake-“

No one else would have noticed it ( _no one else had the hang-ups he had, listened to titles like he did_ ), but the way she says Hatake isn’t quite right. The H is real. The rest isn’t - it buzzes in his ears like an angry insect.

It’s almost distracting enough to make him miss what she says next.

“And I admire you. I…I could even love you, if you gave me the chance.”  
  
It’s startling to see someone take Kakashi seriously. Even Jiji-Hokage could hardly hold it together when Kakashi shunshin’d in and out of his office just to leave leaf piles behind. Somehow, Naruto had never considered a man capable of receiving a love confession.

Apparently, Kakashi agreed with that sentiment, because he was bowing apologetically in what was clearly a prelude to him fleeing the scene in a panic. Naruto counted under his breath.

“One, two, th-“

Then Kakashi was gone and replaced by a log.

It goes like this: he knows Kakashi hides himself away at the memorial stone. Sasuke had met him there before ( _probably in a storm or something during one of his more_   _dramatic episodes_ ) and told Naruto one night, shortly after they’d become something, when he’d been musing on their sensei’s perpetual tardiness. Curiosity gets the best of him, just like it always did back then, and he finds himself wandering over to investigate.

Kakashi looks lonelier than the woman he left behind. Maybe it’s just the fact that he’s sitting alone in what might as well be a graveyard. Naruto isn’t entirely sure, but he can’t leave him like that.

He can’t really ask about the incident directly either, can he? Kakashi was the least direct person he knew ( _and Sasuke spent most of his time being indirectly in Naruto’s company, which was saying something_ ).

He tries to be delicate. However, planning has never been his strong suit, so what slips out is:

“What does she call you?”

Because that name had been bothering him the entire jog over.

He’s relatively certain Kakashi isn’t going to answer him. He’s also relatively certain most people wouldn’t answer him, because he’d just pointed out ( _to himself, at least_ ) that some jutsu had been used to keep a part of a private conversation even more private. A private conversation he’d eavesdropped on.

Thankfully, Kakashi is weird as ever ( _in the future, Naruto will look back on this and wonder why. He’ll wonder why because Kakashi always had reasons_ ).

“Hound.”

Kakashi responds, grimacing and adjusting his mask to sit lower on his face.

The nickname has Naruto scratching his head ( _rolling it over in his mind next to Hatake Kakashi, the copy nin, Sharingan Kakashi, and some more...tasteless things he’d heard_ ). The way that Kakashi says it is familiar, though not in a way most people said names that were theirs.

It was a bit like how Naruto’s mouth shaped the word ‘monster’. Practiced, but not willfully.

He sits down at Kakashi’s back and considers everything he knows about him. Tries to make ‘Hound’ line up with the lackadaisical way Kakashi first introduced himself. Tries to apply it to him the way Naruto had managed to make ‘scarecrow’ fit ( _Kakashi chasing away anything that tried to flit into Team 7’s space, be it missions they wanted or people trying to kill them_ ).  
  
Eventually, he sighs in frustration and knocks the back of his head against Kakashi’s bony spine.

“I don’t get it.”

He admits,

“You’re not a dog. You’re not anything like a dog.”

Behind him, Kakashi’s tense shoulders shift with a huff.

“Mah, why do I feel like I should be offended?”

Kakashi asks, tone too light and cheery for their current setting.

“You should be.”

Naruto agrees easily enough. Trying to rile Kakashi up was familiar territory. It was also something he was good at when Kakashi practically invited him to try ( _he wondered sometimes if it was friendly. If this was how Kakashi bonded with people other than mutual brooding_ ).

“Dogs are great.”

He continues,

“But they’re also obedient.”

He feels Kakashi’s spine twist quickly and glances back _(instinctively towards Kakashi’s uncovered side_ ) on time to receive a sharp slanting look. His sensei was pricklier than usual, no matter his tone.

Naruto couldn’t help but needle him further ( _to try and see more of this new Kakashi – this genuine one_ ).

“You taught us to be disobedient.”

He grinned as Kakashi’s eye narrowed ( _just like Sasuke’s would when Naruto was teasing him out of his jackassary_ ),

“I liked that.”

Kakashi’s shoulders tensed further underneath him. He didn’t disappear in a swirl of foliage, however, so Naruto figured he could keep pushing ( _because back in those days, he didn’t so much talk as push, explaining himself like he was having an argument all by himself_ ).

“When was that?”

Kakashi asked in a fake-sweet tone that promised pain. Unrepentant, Naruto’s grin widened.

“Uh, the whole time?”

He replied,

“It wasn’t fake like some of your other lessons. It was honest, so I liked it.”

Naruto turns his gaze back to the trees as some confusion colours Kakashi’s expression. His throat tightens against his next words. It was surprisingly hard to be straightforward with Kakashi without treating it like a joke. Maybe because Naruto actually cared what he thought ( _maybe because he was sure his sensei liked Sasuke and Sakura better, both of whom didn’t ramble like he did, didn’t push like he did_ ).

Steeling himself, Naruto admits,

“I was taught to be a Shinobi in the academy. No one else ever taught me to be me, though, no matter the rules.”

Kakashi is silent and Naruto tries not to fidget as he continues looking at the branches above. Eventually, Kakashi’s shoulders unwind.

“Teaching you to be disobedient doesn’t make me disobedient.”

Kakashi mutters. He sounds almost petulant and it startles a bark of laughter out of Naruto ( _relieved to be back on familiar ground_ ).

“Still not a dog.”

He guffaws. Kakashi droops behind him, causing him to tip backwards with a yelp.

“My summons are dogs. How can I face them as their Alpha now?”

Kakashi moans, melting impossibly further forward until Naruto is left dangling and shooting back,

“Have you ever actually ‘faced’ anyone in your life, Masky McMask?”

 

///////

It goes like this: no one else in Team Seven ever hears the name ‘Hound’.

    It goes like this: the number of confessions only climbs as Kakashi appears to settle down. The number of rejections goes up at the same rate.

        It goes like this: the conversations they always have afterwards start in the same way. ‘What did they call you?’ The answers never quite fit.

( _Kakashi begins to smile, secure in knowing Naruto’s back is turned, every time the title of ‘Hound’ is soundly rejected. He never says a thing about his student half-stalking him around the city, eavesdropping on confessions he was never meant to hear_ )

 

////////

“What did she call you?”

“What would you say if I said ‘sensei’?”

A grimace and a full-body shudder.  
  
“I’d say that’s not your **name**. Gross, gross, I can never call you that again-“

“I’ve heard enough of your nicknames to know I don’t want one, brat. You’ll just have to get over it. Say it with me-“

“No! Nooooooo!”

 

////////

“What did she call you?”

“He, actually. He called me Kokoshi.”

Howling laughter, heaving sides, and the chirping of startled birds. A soundtrack that made a wrong name fit behind Kakashi’s teeth a little easier.

( _No one ever called him Kokoshi, but the people who used his given name never had it leave their lips the way it was supposed to_ )

( _He supposed he could be forgiven a white lie if it made Naruto laugh_ )

( _He supposed he could be forgiven wanting to hear a friend defend his name to the death, even when he didn’t have to_ )

 

////////

  
The sun is low by the time Naruto finally decides he’s had enough of the hospital. It had taken longer than Kakashi expected, and he distracts himself from thoughts of why that might be by silently shadowing Naruto’s progress over the rooftops.

He’s not surprised when Naruto settles in a copse of trees near the memorial stone ( _Naruto had bullied him there on more than one occasion, insisting on a change in atmosphere_ ). It’s a quiet space that few of Konoha’s nosier Shinobi ever tread.

And it’s a place for talking. If...talking is what Naruto wants to do.

( _Kakashi can count the number of people he’s attempted to comfort in the past decade on two hands_ )

( _He can count the number of successful attempts on less than one_ )

( _The last person he’d tried to talk down from a bad decision fled the village, abandoned his life partner, then drove an electrically fueled punch through their chest while **kissing**  them of all things_)

Landing softly, Kakashi gathers every last scrap of determination he has in an effort to say something. To be there for Naruto in the capacity he was always promising himself he would be.

( _And, just a little, to not lose him to Jiraya forever, another half-formed connection slipping through his fingers_ )

Kakashi is bad at comfort. Naruto, on the other hand, has proven surprisingly adept despite his lack of social graces. Keeping that model in mind, Kakashi speaks before he thinks.

“What did he call you?”

He asks, in a tone that is half-joking and entirely wrong for the situation.

Never before in his life had Kakashi ever been filled with such a visceral urge to murder himself. It was striking, really, he thought as he watched Naruto’s fingernails dig into the dirt, what an effective weapon embarrassment combined with self-recrimination could be. Why, he felt practically dead already.

Naruto’s answering laugh is brittle as he eases his grip on the soil to pat the grass behind himself. It’s an invitation to sit down that Kakashi takes less by choice and more by full-body rebellion.

 _(It’s like his legs have finally decided his brain is too terrible to listen to anymore. He can’t say he blames them_ )

Naruto tilts his head back in a parody of their usual position. This time he isn’t keeping his gaze carefully averted. Instead, he’s meeting Kakashi’s eyes straight on from inches away.

“He called me by my name.”

Naruto says.

Oh.

 **Oh**. Shit.

Kakashi is left sitting there, legs gone completely numb, as Naruto takes off once again. He takes the scent of salt with him ( _along with any warmth Kakashi had been hoarding for himself these past few years_ ).

Kakashi himself remains. He can’t bring himself to move for a long, long time.

 

________

  
The next morning, Naruto rises in a mood as dark as the one he’d gone to sleep in. It hangs around him like a stormcloud as he loses himself in memories.

_“What did he call you?”_

Man, had that ever been a landmine. A terrible reminder of how things always started with him.

_“Naruto Uzumaki.”_

Because, unlike Kakashi, he didn’t give anyone the chance to hang their feelings on an illusion. He didn’t have anything to hide behind. He didn’t want to, either.

_“Naruto Uzumaki.”_

Everything that anyone had to know about him was held in those words. He was the only Naruto. The only Uzumaki. Clanless, singular, alone.

More alone than ever, now. Sasuke knew that. He knew that and he still...

" _Naruto Uzumaki, my best friend, my -“_

A sharp breath punches itself out of his chest. Scrambling out of bed, Naruto considers where Jiraya is most likely to be.

They have to talk.

 

________

  
With his two senseis standing before him, saying the words is even harder than he’d expected. Naruto grinds his teeth as they watch him pace.

“You asked me,”

He says, pointing at Kakashi and failing to note his flinch ( _Jiraiya doesn’t, though, and the look on his face is truly poisonous_ ),

“What he called me. I told you ‘my name’, but that’s not all. That’s not the point.”

His thumb prods at one of his too-long canines absently, pressing until the skin went white and bloodless. The words are practically screaming in the back of his head even as he struggles to say them. Naruto glances up and notices Kakashi seems to be seconds from bolting.

He has to speak before his sensei manages to disappear. He needs their thoughts.

“He said ‘my best friend’,”

Naruto blurts, holding up a placating hand in Kakashi’s direction,  
  
“My best friend, my Jinchuriki.”

There’s more. There’s more but he’s not going to say it. He doesn’t think it’s relevant to their interests anyway ( _and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. It made the scar on his chest twinge in what felt like rebuke_ ).

 Jiraiya twitches at ‘Jinchuriki’, which is expected, but Kakashi’s eye squeezes shut at ‘best friend’. It makes Naruto’s heart sink.

“He was trying to get the Mangekyo Sharingan, wasn’t he?”

Naruto asks ( _despite already knowing the answer_ ).

“That’s not all.”

 Jiraiya mutters in reply, hands winding into his long hair and pulling in clear agitation,

“You’re  **his**  Jinchuriki. As in the one picked out for him to go after, meaning that somebody is hunting for all the others, too.”

“Someone else was probably supposed to kill you.”

Kakashi adds ( _eye still shut, fists clenched, like he hated understanding the way Sasuke thought_ ),

“And Sasuke took matters into his own hands. Orochimaru would’ve gladly given him the opportunity, sick bastard, if only for the drama of it all.”

Jiraiya’s eye twitches at the mention of his old teammate ( _or maybe just at Kakashi talking - the two of them didn’t seem to like each other much, though their reasons for it didn’t seem to be the same_ ).

Grimacing, Jiraiya concludes,

“Akatsuki. Akatsuki wants something from the tailed-beasts and your missing nin potentially derailed their plans in a fit of petty jealousy.”

There’s a part of Naruto that wants to crack a joke. It’s the part that wants to crow at Sasuke being jealous, being petty and possessive, even now. It’s the part that kept noting, again and again, that Sasuke still loves him.

There’s another part of him that’s furious at the thought.

He directs both of them to his new favourite distraction almost desperately. The force of his thoughts derailing is enough to open his mouth despite knowing better ( _despite knowing no one understands, despite embarrassing himself time and again as a child, despite the delicacy of the subject and the way it made everyone recoil in fear_ ).

“Does the kyuubi have a name?”

He finds himself directing at Jiraiya. It’s a stupid question, a stupid hang-up, but the second it’s out of his mouth he clings to the question like a drowning man. He wants to know. He **needs** to know.

What is the Fox? How do they keep it at bay? What had changed to silence it?

Was it a name? Had they sealed its name?

( _Could the only thing Naruto ever truly owned be taken away from him by some symbols and ink?)_

Jiraiya’s jaw is hanging open. His eyes are practically bulging from their sockets after he shuts his mouth and wipes at it nervously.  
  
“Did...did the kyuubi speak to you?”

Jiraiya asks, slow and careful, taking a step towards Naruto ( _glancing down at his stomach and then away, back and away, back and away_ ). He claps a heavy hand to Naruto’s shoulder ( _trembling the slightest bit_ ) and says,

“ **Beasts** don’t have **names**. Remember that.”

A dozen things hit Naruto at once. His gaze slides past Jiraiya ( _his expression drawn, hand trembling_ ) to where Kakashi has gone rigid. There’s a flicker of the name ‘Hound’ and he wonders at the limitations of beasts ( _what beast means to Jiraiya, who had never quite gotten the hang of names and words like Naruto had. What it means to Kakashi, frozen in place_ ).

He almost finds himself arguing that Jiraiya’s toad summons had names, indignation swelling in his chest ( _tired of being misunderstood, tired of tiptoeing around the kyuubi-_ ), when something else blindsides him.

_“Did the kyuubi speak to you?”_

He’d acknowledged the Fox’s feelings as its voice before. He’d called the change in his own body a silence. But he hadn’t realized, not really, not fully, that it had been speaking **to him**.

And now it wasn’t.

( _Beasts don’t have names. Beasts don’t have names, but beasts also didn’t have voices to **speak** with, and Jiraiya had asked-)_

Jiraiya didn’t understand what he was asking, didn’t understand names, but he did understand seals. One half of Naruto’s question was unanswerable. One half Jiraiya might never get, but the other-  
  
“Teach me.”

Naruto demands through gritted teeth, looking away from Kakashi’s too-still figure to stare down Jiraiya instead,

“Teach me what you did. I want to learn funjutsu.”

________

  
Naruto is told to rest and relax. He’s told, in not-so-subtle ways, to spend time with his peers. To let go of training for awhile.

Tsunade can’t keep her eyes off the too-sharp canines Jiraiya still hadn’t explained to him.

He can’t convince her he doesn’t need to relax until she gets used to them. He can’t find Kakashi to nag him into helping him, either. Jiraiya refuses him point-blank, constantly scanning over his stomach like Naruto’s seal will suddenly spring to life and reveal to him every interaction he’s ever had with his monster.  
  
There’s ink on his fingers every time Naruto sees him.

He doesn’t want his old friends to stare at him like they did. He doesn’t want them to change, but he can’t stand for things to just...stay the same ( _like they were before Sasuke left_ ) either. Everything already feels wrong and he doesn’t want to add anything ( _anyone_ ) else to the mix. 

He just wants answers. He just wants to chase after Sasuke or drown thoughts of him in thoughts of something worse ( _tracing the lines he knew were there, pressed into his belly, lines he couldn’t see_ ). He wants to hurt and train and  **hurt**  until he’s tired of it. 

________

  
Seeing Shikamaru helps change that. Naruto has forgotten, by and large, what it’s like to be home. Or rather, he’d wanted to forget.

It didn’t feel right for Konoha to still be Konoha after all the ways he’d changed ( _it didn’t feel right to have it change either. He wanted Konoha to be safe. To always be safe_ ).  
  
“Y’know,”

A lazy drawl rolls through the empty training ground he has stolen away to,

“I visited you in the hospital. It’s so far away from the Nara compound that I lost at least ten minutes of daylight and you didn’t even have the decency to wake up.”

It doesn’t feel right for his relationships to be unchanged...but maybe they aren’t. Maybe they’d changed a little along with the people. Changed but not too much ( _Shikamaru had made chunin years ago, was well on his way to jounin, but was still a little shit)_.

The way he hoped he had ( _Naruto Uzumaki, future hokage - he could only hope_ ).

“Stingy.”

Naruto play-hisses, tossing a kunai into the center of an exploding tag. The resulting explosion rocks Shikamaru on his heels and his disgruntled expression is enough to wring a brittle smile out of Naruto.

“I had very important things to do.”

Naruto tells Shikamaru, nose in the air, as he throws another kunai ( _not charged with chakra this time as his mind drifts back to-),_

“Things that were more important than your cloud-watching.”

Shikamaru’s eyes glitter at the taunt, taking on the sharp edge of intelligence that never ceased to amaze him ( _especially when he was the only one to consistently bring it out - one of the few things he had always been able to do, even when they were kids_ ).

“Idiot, you should always keep an eye on the clouds.”

Shikamaru replies. Then he smirks and Naruto feels his body lock into place.

“If you’d been looking up,”

Shikamaru drawls,

“You would’ve realized what angle the midday shadows are on.”

Shikamaru extends a hand in front of himself and Naruto is surprised to find his own doesn’t move with it. Instead, when Shikamaru flicks his fingers, he feels a force colliding with his forehead strongly enough to make his eyes water.

“You couldn’t do that before.”

He whines despite himself. He wants to rub his head, but shadows still weigh his arms down heavily. Shikamaru chuckles and jams a shadow finger in his ear, making Naruto shriek and struggle in vain.

They spend a day like that, showing off improvements in their arsenal of jutsus, and they don’t talk about Sasuke. Naruto doesn’t even think about him much; he’s too busy fighting off shadow hands pinching his cheeks. 

It’s nice.

Different...but not. A continuation of an old story.

It’s nice to have something that didn’t feel so much like an ending or beginning ( _Naruto Uzumaki, future hokage. He didn’t have to introduce himself to old friends. Didn’t have to bring up names at all_ ).

________

  
If Shikamaru is a continuation, Naruto wonders what Sakura is. She hadn’t been in his hospital room when he’d woke. She hadn’t been by to see him since.

He wonders if she thinks he broke his promise to her ( _he wasn’t done yet. Him and Sasuke...they weren’t done yet_ ).

Tsunade pushes and pushes at him to reconnect with the village before he runs off again. He dips his feet in the river and lets Rock Lee drag him into the water for a race (one he wins mostly because Rock Lee’s weights nearly cause him to drown). He finds his routes home routinely cut off by Shikamaru, earrings and eyes glinting in the low light, to engage in some warped game of shadow tag ( _he had to stay on well-lit streets if he didn’t want to eat dirt_ ). He lets Iruka bully him into cooking lessons despite his own lack of ability ( _burnt rice welded to the bottom of a pot_ ).

He doesn’t see Sakura.

He could, he thinks, if he wanted to. He could go to the hospital and corner her. He didn’t break his promise.

But by Kami, the shame that he feels. The shame and the ( _a flickering light, a darkness burning_ ) fear.

Because Sakura loves Sasuke. And with a brand sitting right above his heart (less than an inch to the right), Naruto has never been more dangerously sure Sasuke loves him and only him.

He knows Sakura has seen it - she’s Tsunade’s apprentice. He knows she knows what it means.

He wonders why it scarred ( _and if she’ll think he let it on purpose, as if he had any choice in the matter_ ). 

________

  
At the place he shares with Kakashi ( _or shared. It’s been empty for awhile_ ), Naruto sees Sakura. She’s family - a sister in all but blood - however he feels a flicker of apprehension seeing her  **there**  ( _a darkness burning_ ). 

That’s his spot. Not hers. 

It’s ridiculous and so he chokes it back. What was his was hers. She had never tried to take anything from him that he wouldn’t willingly share ( _except, except, Kami he wonders about the scar on his chest. He wonders if she’d take it from him. He wonders if he’d let her_ ).

She spots him as he struggles with himself ( _with too-sharp teeth, subtly changed eyes, a sense that he wasn’t quite the same_ ). The look on her face isn’t judgmental. It isn’t sorrow. 

 **It’s envy**.

 

________

“Bring him back.”

She tells him, hovering in the doorway of his apartment with wild hair and a hand clenched to her heart ( _not quite in the right place_ ),

“You have to, because only you can.”

She’s gone in a flurry of emotions ( _tears sliding down her cheeks a second before she could fully turn away, a twist to her mouth that spoke of fury, nails blooming red against the skin of her chest_ ).

He wants to make a promise to her again, but his legs won’t move to give chase. There’s something unfamiliar ( _more_ _familiar than he’d like_ ) inside of him holding him back.

A darkness burning ( _he wonders if she wishes it was her lips Sasuke pressed against as his hand closed around her heart_ ).

 

/////////

  
Pink is the only colour he can see. Then seafoam green. Sakura is crying and the green runs red with irritation.

Sakura is crying and he wants to go to her ( _she was so strong, so brave, felt so much. She was never afraid of her emotions - not limited in the ways the rest of Team Seven was. Always in bloom_ ).

Sasuke’s arms wrap around his waist.

“My best friend.”

He murmurs, arms tightening snake-like. 

“My Jinchuriki.”

Locust pods chatter against a yellow sky. Sakura is crying. She’s the only one who believed in Sasuke the same way Naruto did. The only other one who was willing to wait for him ( _except Naruto didn’t wait. He didn’t know how to wait_ ).

There’s a snarl in Naruto’s head, one that makes the chill in Sasuke’s eyes seem...beneath him. Childish. Petty.

Then he sees nothing but white. Sakura is crying and Sasuke’s lips move against his. 

“My best friend. My Jinchuriki.”

Kami, it makes his skin crawl ( _even as the word ‘my’ blazes through him, because even now he belongs to-)._

“If you survive this, it’ll prove you’re strong...we can try again.”

“They can take the kyuubi out and I can have  **you**. Strong enough for the next generation - you’ll chase me again, right?”

 “Right, Naruto?”

Sakura is crying and Sasuke might be, too. Naruto isn’t, though.

He’s snarling and moving less than an inch to the right.

 

/////////

  
If the Fox knows hatred, does it know love? Does it know where the line between them is?

 Because Naruto doesn’t, but he wants to.

////////

  
Did the Fox know what it was to want to live badly enough to hit first? Badly enough to bite the hand that feeds, just for the chance to be called by name and only by name?

 Had the Fox ever introduced itself in anything but shades of red?


	2. Descent Into Maelstrom (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naruto begins making some dangerous conclusions that everyone else refuses to clue in to because they're too busy with their own personal crises.

“Sometimes...”

Naruto starts, laying under the sun by the ravine ( _tucked just under the rise of a hill and out of Ino’s sight. Out of Tsunade’s, too, because Shikamaru was supposed to be paper-pushing instead of lounging next to him_ ),

“I think I don’t understand what love is.”

Shikamaru’s eyes are closed and his breathing is even. Somehow, though, Naruto knows he has his attention. He feels like he’s had Shikamaru’s attention his entire life _(a steady hand on his back pushing him to prove himself, a sharpness prickling along the nape of his neck every time he managed to surprise_ ).

“I could never...”

Naruto fumbles for words and wishes, not for the first time, that the clever people around him could just speak for him,  
  
“I can’t show how I feel using - I just don't understand telling people they're important with pain. I don’t know what-“

He scrubs a frustrated hand through his hair. His anxiety rises as Shikamaru shifts, worrying that he’s ruined the mellow of the moment, that no one will have the patience for what he has to say. Jiraiya usually listens ( _even though he doesn’t get it_ ), so he’s forgotten that most people won’t.

“What is worth? What is worthy of love? I don’t understand - I don’t understand how people stop when it isn’t worth it anymore. I don’t understand how people start.”

He gets out in a rush. One of Shikamaru’s eyes has slitted open and it’s fixed on the center of his chest.

“I don’t know if I love like other people do. I don’t know if I know how to do it right.”

Naruto admits, pressing his hand just to the right of the place Shikamaru is staring at ( _as if he could remove it from sight and mind_ ).

“My dad says,”

Shikamaru sighs, sliding his headband down to cover more of his face,

“That love is whatever makes you a better person. He’s biased, though - I don’t think he’s ever loved anything that hurt him.”

Under the shadow of the hitae-ate, Naruto can make out the slightest glimmer. He has Shikamaru’s full attention even if he’s trying to hide it.

“Choji has liked plenty of girls who were mean to him, so that’s clearly a possibility. An illogical one, but a possibility.”

Shikamaru muses,

“And Sakura...she feels like you do, right?”

Too-sharp teeth sink into Naruto’s lower lip. There’s a pause in Shikamaru’s breathing and the glimmer seems to grow brighter.

Sakura doesn’t love like Naruto. Not quite, he thinks. She always uses the same words - _suki, koi_ \- and he...doesn’t. There’s a sharpness to them that’s similar to the sharpness in Sasuke’s or Ino’s.

They are pointed words. His are breathless. Expansive. Rounded and soft and dug so deep into the root of him he doesn’t know how to separate them from his own name. 

Never really knew how to separate them from others to give to Sasuke alone ( _the way Sasuke always seemed to want. The way Naruto was only beginning to understand, the way that shaped the only scar he’s ever had, the way that confused him long after others started calling them lovers_ ).

“She knows what love is called and it...she says it and it just, y’know,”

He spreads his fingers and wiggles them in front of his face,

“Exists.”

Naruto had tried getting this concept across to countless people before. Not about this subject, but about others. He’d tried to emphasize the way the word ‘child’ had hung around the hokage after Jiji said it, how it was different than when his teachers showed him how it was written, how it meant something heavier. Nobody ever got it. 

But Shikamaru was smart. So were Jiraya and Kakashi. So were Sasuke and Sakura, once upon a time ( _when they’d been willing to try for him_ ). He couldn’t stop trying to teach them, if only because they’d sometimes give him better words to use in return.

“Love is,”

Naruto clicked his tongue against his canines, 

“It’s in me. At least, what I **think** is love is in me - other people have called it that. Sakura, though. She says it and it exists, but even if we feel it towards the same person, I-“

Shikamaru had pushed his headband up, leaning forward on his elbows as he steepled his fingers in front of his face. There’s silence for a moment as he thinks.

“You don’t say it like she says it?”

He asks and Naruto nods. A furrow digs itself between Shikamaru’s brows.

“For you...it has always existed?”

He guesses, quirking a brow in question. Naruto tries the words on for size. They aren’t quite right, but Shikamaru is smarter than he’ll ever be.

“What else has always existed?”  
  
Naruto asks, trusting his friend to know ( _to give him the words_ ). The distance between them has shrunk enough that he can see the minute twitches of Shikamaru’s mouth as he tries out several explanations mentally ( _Naruto has caught him playing shogi with himself before while setting up pranks. He watched long enough to realize Shikamaru liked to run his through his plans as if he were a general commanding an army in his head. It was too bad he couldn’t use Kage Bunshin – he’d be incredible_ ).

“All natural things, I guess. Chakra, wind, water-“ 

Shikamaru cuts off with a grunt when Naruto seizes his shoulders. For the first time in what feels like ages, Naruto's grinning fully ( _these sparks of understanding never grew old. He’d hated learning in school, but like this? Never_ ).

“Natural! It’s natural! It’s just-“

Naruto cries, making an explosive one-handed gesture, 

“Boom! Or whoosh - it’s just  **there**!”

Shikamaru blinks, clearly not grasping the idea entirely, but willing to humour him. He huffs and rolls onto his back on the grass as Naruto hangs over him.

“I don’t know what love is, really.” 

He says, lips quirking as Naruto continues grinning down at him,

“But natural sounds good.” 

His mouth moves a little ( _running explanations by himself)_ before he slides his hitae-ate entirely over his eyes. 

“Like the sun.”

Shikamaru murmurs.

Naruto agrees excitedly, glad to be understood, and Shikamaru buries his face in his arms. 

________  


The little copse of trees by the memorial stone remains empty. Naruto doesn’t see Kakashi, even when he finally seeks him out. The closest he gets is a hasty substitution with a cart of watermelons.

He hears him, though.

It seems like every time he turns around, Jiraiya is squabbling with someone in hushed tones just around the corner. The more times it happens, the curiouser Naruto gets ( _if only told hold something over Jiraiya’s head long enough to get him to teach. He wants to know about sealing, even if the old pervert thought he was going blow himself up_ ). 

He finally realizes who exactly is arguing with Jiraiya after the third time he sneaks up to find nobody there. It’s clearly Kakashi - hasty exits and all. Jiraiya denied it when Naruto called him out, however, leaving him to stew in frustration.

It’s Gai who finally fills him in, popping into his apartment at some ungodly hour the second he even thinks about feeling left out.

“They’ve been arguing about you leaving.”

He says, hanging from the windowsill and demolishing the rice balls Naruto had brought him ( _his stomach rumbling loud enough to wake the dead_ ). Gai thoughtfully taps at his nose before leaning in closer. 

“They’re also fighting about who will teach you what. The Hokage’s been making you wait while she chooses somebody new - a challenge to Kakashi’s skill! He’s rising to the occasion with words and fiery spirit!”

He whispers ( _loudly_ ) conspiratorially. It’s a goofy display, though the lines around Gai’s eyes are deeper than usual ( _for the first time, it occurs to Naruto that Gai and Kakashi are actually friends_ ).

“They’ve been following me? To argue about me?”

Naruto asks incredulously. It wasn’t really surprising behavior from either of them l, but the fact that it was about him was...weird ( _on one hand, they cared. On the other hand, they were treating him like a child in the single most aggravating way possible. No one treated him like one at age 10, so why now?_ ). Gai makes a complicated face that no one else would ever be able to replicate. It tells Naruto absolutely nothing.

“Why are they avoiding me then?”

He presses. Gai’s expression does something even more complicated ( _for such an honest man, his body language was complicated enough that he might as well be a master liar_ ). At Naruto’s blank face, Gai sighed before gathering himself to grin full-force.

“Neither of them is being very youthful at the moment!”

He proclaimed. That...was as close to a direct insult he had ever heard Gai come. Coupled with the giant grin, it was actually a bit scary.

It was scarier still when Gai scuttled back down his building on just his fingertips, waving goodbye with his feet. 

________  


By the time Captain Yamato was assigned to teach Naruto how to use the kyuubi’s power ( _something that had apparently been changing his body despite no one **telling** him that_) Naruto is ready to throw himself headfirst into revenge. Tsunade wanted him to reconnect with people, Jiraiya and Kakashi didn’t want the other to teach him, and no one wanted to show him funjutsu or let him work through his issues  **alone**  ( _like he’d been doing for years before now_ ).

So fine. They could have it their way. All of them – even Shikamaru and Sakura – could get exactly what they wanted. He was going to train the Fox’s power with Captain Yamato.

And he was never going to leave that man’s side – they were going to be best friends.

Everybody wins ( _or rather; loses until Naruto gets what he wants_ ).

The absolute horror on Jiraiya’s face when Naruto drags Yamato off for ramen without inviting him? The irritation on Tsunade’s as he loudly peppered the Captain with questions day after day while walking by her office? The tick developing in Shikamaru’s jaw as he tries to corner Naruto on his way home, only to find him across the street pounding on Yamato’s front door for the second night in a row?

Beautiful.

He bares his teeth in a feral grin and resolves to beat down the resolve of every single member of the village with his own if he has to. He’s going to get answers, whether they like it or not.

( _He’s going to have a mission and he’s going to feel better **his**  way_)

________  


Trying to grasp one tail’s worth of power might have been over-ambitious. Trying to touch any of the kyuubi’s sealed chakra might’ve been, too.

Pressed to the ground by sacred wood, Naruto feels questions filling him to bursting while he muffles frustrated screams in the dirt.

________  


Yamato has been trained into silence well. Too well. He goes out for ramen, but doesn’t speak. Doesn’t answer questions no matter what tactics Naruto tries ( _henges, bribery, even his transformation before his thoughts ran too dark to maintain her_ ). He even seems to be enjoying himself while watching Naruto crash on his couch, though his permanently placid expression might just be causing Naruto to project.

Everything about Yamato seemed to be focused on the mission. It was like there was nothing else for him. 

But he’d left ANBU after Kakashi. Had Kakashi’s approval, considering his total absence as Naruto continued to train and the lack of disturbances in the hokage’s office ( _he might not know a lot about his old sensei, but he knew enough to realize Kakashi’s shitfits were legendary_ ).

Naruto scrutinized the Captain over yet another shared dinner. There had to be something...

“You’re disobedient, too. Aren’t you?”

He asks. It’s a shot in the dark, but Yamato pauses with his spoon halfway to his mouth. Places it gently back down on his plate.

Smiles like a shark.

( _Well...maybe it was time to change tactics_ ) 

________  


Sacred wood held true and strong against the kyuubi’s chakra. It was completely effective at stifling the chakra it touched as Naruto made no effort to calm down ( _letting the Fox’s chakra burn corrosively onwards, strangely flat except for a core of dark resentment he’d felt since he’d first brushed his own chakra coils_ ).

Yamato was smiling the same shark smile from the other night. Beside him, Jiraiya was yelling angrily and preparing to interfere.

An explosive tag, just like the ones he’d blown with a kunai back with Shikamaru, is pressed flat against Naruto’s palm. He can think past the Fox ( _or the Fox’s chakra - he couldn’t be sure what this was, what one tail was, when it didn’t seem to speak except of rage_ ) as long as the mokutan’s wood keeps him still.

Yamato must know that ( _pressing Naruto’s face into the dirt until he’s himself again, over and over_ ). He’s known it all along. Has been waiting for Naruto to  **think**.

Naruto presses chakra, the barest thread of his own past the tidal wave of rage-rage-rage, into the tag. He feels it getting absorbed a second before Yamato does ( _shark grin fading and eyes going wide_ ).

The resulting explosion is a lot larger than he’d intended. It’s a bit hard to see past the concussion, but he can make out charred branches on the ground well enough to know that the explosion hasn’t been neutralized at all.

Mokutan worked perfectly on the Fox. Not on him, though.

So what was the difference?

________  


When Naruto asks Yamato what chakra forms Mokutan, the shark smile reappears. He has the oddest feeling that Yamato likes him more post-explosion than he did prior. 

He’s not sure what to make of that ( _his mission is succeeding, at least in part_ ).

He forgets pretty quickly, however, when Yamato draws him a symbol and says, flat as anything. 

“Nature.”

________  


What Shikamaru didn’t get, what Jiraiya refused to get, what Yamato maybe got, and Kakashi had some tenuous grip on, was that things that were natural played by their own rules. Chakra pathways, whatever, all the rules behind those and the biology that structured them couldn’t matter less.

What mattered was that they represented a series of natural things. The justus that used each of them did, too. Those were easier to understand than ‘pathways’ and ‘coils’ because each of them was just a series of symbols. 

Hand signs. Seals. Words. Titles that branched from one core concept:

All natural things had permanent names ( _singular, unchangeable_ ). They had a core that was made up of them and only them. 

To Shinobi, names were clan, lineage, history ( _Shika, Shikaku, Shikamaru - patterns of generations past_ ). They were earned and traded. They represented each new relationship ( _nicknames few and far between_ ) and every loss ( _missing nin taking on new lives entirely, using different words for themselves, dropping their clan title like dirt_ ).

They could change.

Nature wasn’t like that. Nature just...was. Always had been. It didn’t represent history - it **was** history. 

Learning Rasengan and Rasenshuriken on the road taught Naruto exactly what wind was. The meaning of the name. Its full potential ( _in freedom, independence, choice_ ).

And it was just a fraction of something larger.

Nature contained itself. Each division could cancel out some other piece. Everything stayed in balance.

Anything could fight against or overcome it with ingenuity, but it its raw form? Only nature could nullify nature.

And the kyuubi’s chakra? That had been nullified, not overcome.

 

________  


All natural things have permanent names. Beasts don’t.

Naruto wasn’t so sure the Fox was a beast at all.  


________  


Knowing what he does doesn’t help Naruto get a grip on a single tail. He can sort of crush the power into himself, throttling it until it barely brushed through him, and maintain his sense of self. Anything more knocks him flat on his ass.

Yamato keeps coming at him expectantly, though. 

Naruto doesn’t control nature. He isn’t built for it - he’d gathered Mokutan was an uncommon skill that he couldn’t just up and learn. He can’t direct the Fox into the wind either, though, and pushing it into fire had proven disastrous.

Naruto was missing something. 

________  


Silence creeps in around the edges of the seal on Naruto’s stomach. When he prods at it, it threatens to pull him in. Even a second of that feels like drowning.

Feeding the Fox into fire tended to blow up in his face. It was like too much rushed in, whereas with wind it all seemed to scatter and blow away.

His ability to connect to water is meager, but he tries to think of the silence in his head as he pulls it forward. The stillness is covering a raging source of energy. Two states of being pulling back and forth like the tides.

For a moment, he can almost taste the word. Water almost **means** something.

Then the forming pool sputters out of existence in his hands. 

Somehow, he suspects that even if he understands water in its entirely, it still won’t work quite right for him. Sakura had said he didn’t have the 'paths' in his body when he’d asked her back in their academy days, but now he’s confident there’s more to it than that.

Wind scatters. Fire explodes. Water...has never been his to begin with ( _the way it settles in his soul asks for time and patience. Naruto doesn’t have that – never has, never will_ ). 

He thinks it might not belong to the Fox, either ( _before, when he’d gotten lost in a haze on that bridge in Wave, when his friends had fallen, he’d fallen, too. He’d fallen **inwards**  into water. Water and darkness. A sewer he’d never seen before, but had always been there_).  
  
But fire...fire just might.

 

________  


“What’s the difference between a fire and an explosion?” 

Naruto asks, hanging upside down from a roof directly behind Shikamaru. He takes some satisfaction in the way his friend jumps and drops his bag of oranges before he repeats himself.

Shikamaru squints at him distractedly ( _probably still sore about Captain Yamato getting in the way of their games of tag. Or the fact that Naruto had gotten him involved on purpose. Probably the second one_ ). He’s dedicating more attention to the bruises on his fruit than anything else.

It’s a bit annoying. 

Snatching an orange from Shikamaru’s hand, Naruto quarters it and devours a chunk with a smirk.

“What makes an explosive tag go boom instead of just burning? I know enough without Ero-sennin’s help to see the symbol is based on fire.”

Naruto asks again. Shikamaru glares at him, but accepts an orange quarter when Naruto hands it to him.

“Fire is just energy and wind - not wind chakra, but the air around us. The energy in it is stable. It’s going on a constant rate.” 

Shikamaru says, flicking some pulp into Naruto’s hair. 

“It’s a bit like you.”

Shikamaru continues, 

“It fluctuates sometimes, but the core of it doesn’t change. It keeps burning, expending energy, until there’s nothing left to burn. No more wind or no more fuel.”

He fixes Naruto with a displeased look that clearly says he’s expecting Naruto to use up all the fuel. Whether it’s supposed to be his own ‘fuel’ ( _sleep? Food?)_ or Shikamaru’s, he’s not sure. He has definitely seen Shikamaru awake more often than usual, though he doesn’t really think that’s his fault.

Shikamaru rolls his eyes and begins meandering down the street, seemingly losing interest in his explanation. Naruto huffs and chases after him ( _he was definitely still sore about Captain Yamato. Usually Naruto would be rubbing it in his face, but he was so close-)._  

“So explosions don’t do that?”

He wheedles, hooking his arm around Shikamaru’s shoulders. He just barely catches the tiny quirk of his friend’s mouth as Shikamaru hums agreeably. 

“C’mon,”

Naruto whines,

“You know I can’t figure it out on my own!”

Something odd passes over them, a catch in Shikamaru’s pace and breathing that makes it seem like he’s about to say something, though nothing comes of it. Usually a joke would’ve slotted into that place. Maybe an insult. 

They take a few more steps in silence. Then, too weirded out to go on, Naruto stops walking to examine the man in front of him. 

Shikamaru won’t look at him. He seems a bit...a bit like he’s losing a match of shogi without knowing why ( _frustrated with himself_ ). It’s disconcerting.

“You, uh, have the words for my ideas.”

Naruto tells Shikamaru, feeling uncharacteristically bashful ( _usually Shikamaru figured things out on his own, then explained them to Naruto. He didn’t have a problem with calling Naruto an idiot. He didn’t have a problem with Naruto calling **himself** an idiot_). 

“I can figure it out...” 

Naruto mumbles, rubbing at the back of his neck and staring down at his shoes ( _because it had been ages since he said that honestly. As anything less than a declaration to prove himself_ ),

“But you help.” 

Despite thinking that had been obvious before, saying it aloud is somehow...embarrassing. He spent more time teasing Shikamaru than anything else. It made this weird ( _with Kakashi, they always pretended the other wasn’t there when they were honest. And Iruka was different - always had been_ ). Naruto didn’t like the look on his friend’s face though, and Iruka was always telling him to  **talk**  of someone didn’t understand him, so -

Fingers hook under his chin and pull until he’s forced to make eye contact with Shikamaru ( _looking at Naruto like a particularly difficult puzzle he’d love to pull apart_ ). They stay like that for a heartbeat, not moving ( _and not breathing on Naruto’s part_ ), before Shikamaru slowly releases him.

“Explosions let out all their energy at once.” 

Shikamaru says, walking away while leaving Naruto momentarily dumbstruck,

“They’re unstable and they make other things unstable, too.”

An orange sails in a perfect arc to plop down on Naruto’s head. Shikamaru looks over his shoulder to smirk at him even as he tilts his hitae-ate to cast his eyes in shadow. 

“Some people say they’re chaos incarnate.”

 

________  


Naruto walks home in a daze.

Chaos incarnate.

**Chaos.**

A darkness burning, a blaze out of control, the wind scattering ( _a child bursting through a crowd, ANBU chasing after him, a wild uncontrolled laugh, a feeling in his chest that synced up with the one curled in his stomach_ ).

Chaos. 

The kyuubi was chaos. 

________  


Once again, knowledge wasn’t power when Naruto only had part of the picture. He couldn’t hold onto chaos any better than he could nature. And when he tried to let go and simply direct chaos?

Jiraiya’s face was scratched to the moon and back, and, despite his utter failure, Captain Yamato seems even fonder of Naruto than before. He even claps Naruto on the back without causing him to take a nosedive into the dirt.

Finally, in a fit of frustration, Naruto lets  **himself**  go. He’s gotten back at everyone except the core of all his problems. He’s tired of it ( _tired of feeling sad, of being angry without being able to do anything about it, of missing someone who had hurt him_ ).

“Pay up, you smarmy bastard!” 

He shouts at the silent still water filling his head, 

“You’re 18 years overdue and I’m charging interest! One tail, please!” 

The water stirs. Boils. Throws him clean out of his head in a way he’d been increasingly worried the Fox couldn’t do anymore ( _because that? That felt like an answer - a **voice**_ ).

And then he’s cloaked in red.

________  


What follows is a whirlwind. A shark smile, a shout, three clones vibrating with more power than he’s ever touched before. The wind whistles, but nothing chatters or chirps. Fire almost swallows him whole, but nothing burns.

Sacred wood can still strip away his strength, however he’s fast enough that it doesn’t matter. Strong enough, too, lifting Yamato’s trees clean from the ground. 

Everything is a cacophony of sound and light. It makes more sense to him than any lesson, any book, or lecture ever had.

It’s chaos. And it comes to him naturally. 

________  


“He’ll mess with seals now whether you teach him or not.” 

Yamato notes, watching Naruto ( _completely drained and bordering on chakra exhaustion_ ) sleep in the dirt without a care in the world. He doesn’t bother to examine Jiraiya’s expression, already having a fairly good idea of what range of ‘sour’ it has settled in.

The sannin grunts and it sounds like a disagreement. Then, accusingly, he mutters, 

“You’ve made him into even more of a brat than he already was. If he ever listens to me again, I’ll buy you a fruit basket.”

Yamato stoically blocks a vicious pinch to his side with a thin layer of wood.

“It was what Konoha needed.” 

He tells Jiraiya placidly, 

“Chunin obey. Jounin make their own way.”

Quickly, he blocks three more increasingly bruising hits. Jiraiya clicks his tongue against his teeth, hissing, 

“He’s not a jounin. He’s not even chunin - your ‘captain’ made sure of that by being such a miserable fuck up.”

Yamato scowls and finally looks at the older man. Jiraiya is practically bristling. 

“He would be if he stayed here instead of going with you.”

Yamato shrugs, faux-careless,

“But you already knew that.” 

A threatening atmosphere is beginning to press down on Yamato’s shoulders ( _chills wandering up his spine like skeletal fingers_ ). The sannin smiles as if he has a knife tucked between his teeth. 

“That bastard Hatake might think I just don’t want to talk to Naruto about his parents,”

Jiraiya hisses, jabbing a chakra-coated finger into Yamato’s armoured chest, 

“But I’m not the only one who could’ve said something. I’m not the only one who knows what happened to the last Uzumaki who knew too much funjutsu.”

The next jab breaks straight through wood to collide bruisingly with Yamato’s body, 

“Maybe, just maybe, I don’t want my godson to learn that he’s lost even more than knows. Maybe I don’t want to paint an even bigger target on his back.” 

Jiraiya clicks his tongue against his teeth again. He glares pointedly at the trees over Yamato’s shoulder and growls,

“When we’re on our last legs and everything is in the shitter, I don’t want to give that kid the means to make the same kind of grand sacrifice his parents did.”

It’s a struggle to speak, but Yamato has faced down things at least a fraction as scary as an enraged sannin before, so he manages ( _barely_ ). 

“He’s not a kid. He’s 18.”

He says. Jiraiya tilts his head and looks down his nose at him. Like he’s worth less than a bug ( _all those years spent by Orochimaru’s side suddenly so much more obvious_ ).

“And?”

Jiraiya asks, tone gone condescending ( _with an undercurrent of dark anger_ ), 

“He’s not Hatake’s salvation, either. He’s  **my**  kid and I’ll have to die before I let him do what Minato-“

Snarling, Jiraiya turns on his heel and begins to walk away. He pauses at the edge of the training ground. 

“I love that kid.”

He calls out, voice and jaw wound tight,

“And I’m going to be leaving with him.”

________  


Hearing that he’s leaving is both a relief and a source of anxiety for Naruto. He finally feels...present regularly instead of just in flashes. It settles him even as the continued quiet pooling in his belly threatens what little peace he has. 

He’s not sure if he’ll be able to maintain that ‘presence’ on the road again. Especially not with the books he’s nicked from the library ( _or the lessons he’s going to force out of Jiraya, if only to reduce the number of explosions that the old man will have to endure_ ). 

Naruto knows a fraction of the solution to a problem that has plagued him his entire life. That has been written into his skin and his chakra. One that terrifies him ( _because the more he finds out, the more sure he is that someday, somewhere, someone could choose to take away the very root of him if they simply learned its name_ ).

He isn’t going to be able to let that go. He knows himself too well to believe otherwise. He’s been taught too well to believe otherwise ( _Yamato’s shark smile, Kakashi’s twin bells tucked safely underneath his jounin uniform where he thinks Naruto and Sakura will never see them_ ).

If there’s one thing he’s afraid of, though, it’s his monster. Or rather, the feelings it brings out in him ( _a darkness burning, teeth he cuts himself on when he’s not careful_ ).

Naruto isn’t smart, so he doesn’t know if he can get what he wants without giving the Fox something, too. He doesn’t know if he has the words to tell Jiraiya what he’s afraid of ( _because beasts don’t have names, but they do. **They do**_ ). 

He knows people who are smart, though. 

________  


“Come with me.” 

Isn’t the best opening line - as a request or an argument - but Naruto feels like he’s going to crawl right out of his skin ( _because he knows what’s outside the walls of Konoha, a yellow sky, the chattering of birds_ ). He can’t think of anything better. Luckily, lately Shikamaru has been listening. He’s been learning the ways in which Naruto speaks, and Naruto is hoping that that’s enough. 

There are papers in Shikamaru’s arms. They stand out because of the way Naruto’s words make Shikamaru clutch them closer ( _his fingers tightening at the edges of the pages, pulling until the paper strains_ ). 

Before Shikamaru even opens his mouth, Naruto knows the answer is no. He knows it’s no because Shikamaru is a chunin, nearly a jounin, yet it still stings the same way every rejection since childhood did.

( _It still feels as inevitable as them, too_ )

“I can’t.” 

Shikamaru tells him, keeping Naruto carefully out of his field of view, 

“The village is preparing for the next round of chunin exams. It’s supposed to be diplomatic – I’m in charge.”

Ah. He was missing the chance to move up yet again, wasn’t he? Missing the chance to keep pace with his peers ( _or even see them. Maybe Tsunade had been right. Maybe he should’ve gone to visit all the others – Kiba, Hinata, Shino_ -). 

Maybe he’d never catch up.

( _Naruto Uzumaki, future hokage_ )

No. No, he would. He’d skip straight through chunin to jounin if he had to. He won’t let himself be left behind again. He won’t let anyone else worry about it, either.

Naruto hooks his fingers under Shikamaru’s chin and forces him to meet his eyes.

“Mah, mah, Shikamaru. Looks like I’ll be going on adventures while you’re stuck with paperwork.”

He says, trying to remember exactly how his usual mischievous tone sounded when Shikamaru’s own expression had gone so intent. He doesn’t immediately get a reply, so Naruto decides to rescue what’s left of his pride and just leave ( _that was the good thing about being away – whatever embarrassing things you do before you leave are long forgotten when you get back_ ). 

Shikamaru’s hand catches his in a bruising grip, though, keeping it in place on his jaw.

“You’ll be back soon.”

Shikamaru says, stepping in closer almost casually ( _though the glint in his eyes in anything but. Naruto feels like they’re playing some kind of game he doesn’t know the rules to_ ).

“You’ll be back soon.”

He repeats,

“So I won’t miss you. Instead, I’ll make jounin while you’re gone and you can die of jealousy the next time you see me.”

Naruto gapes at him. The idea of Shikamaru actually challenging someone was...he couldn’t even imagine it. He wasn’t sure if it had actually even just happened. He was being teased, but he was almost completely certain that his friend would be flaunting his new flak jacket the second Naruto stepped through the gates ( _the thought hurt. It hurt square in the center of his chest_ ). 

“I-“

He spluttered,

“I’ll come back so fast that I’ll ruin your jounin exam! I’ll steal your jacket! Just – just watch me, Baka-maru!”

The chuckle he got in response was low and throaty. Lazy and relaxed to the point it was almost sleep-rough ( _it made the pain in his chest worse. He was sure Shikamaru was going to progress further than he could even imagine while he was gone, changing without him_ -).

“I’ll hold you to it.”

Shikamaru drawled, sliding his fingers up the hand he had captured and pressing it more firmly against his jaw. His eyes glittered darkly as Naruto scowled. 

When Shikamaru left with his papers, he left confident he wasn’t going to be the only one hurting while Naruto was off traveling. He doesn’t let himself think too much about why he doesn’t feel any guilt.

 

________  
  


“Come with me.”

Naruto requests ( _less nervous than he was to ask Shikamaru, but just as graceless_ ). He hasn’t expected to find Kakashi so easily after weeks of being dodged at every turn. He doubly hadn’t expected to find him at their spot, his back open for them to sit like they usually did. It caught him off-centre.

He hoped that Kakashi being here meant he’d been looking for him, too.

Seconds tick by and his question goes stubbornly unanswered. Kakashi hasn’t even acknowledged him - he’s just sitting in their usual position and burying his nose in a book. 

Ugh, everyone Naruto knew was weird ( _operating entirely by their own set of rules without giving him the manual_ ).

Sighing, Naruto crouches and hooks his chin over his old jounin sensei’s shoulder. No reaction.

He starts reading aloud from the page. No reaction. 

Grumbling, he sits back-to-back with the second biggest pain in the ass he’s ever met. Kakashi’s routines were all bizarre. Bizarre and rigorously maintained ( _even if Naruto was the one who started this one_ ). 

“I want you to come with me.”

He says, tilting his head back and resting it just below Kakashi’s neck. Naruto feels more than hears him release a long breath.

Still no answer, but at least the pages have stopped turning. Anxiety is trying to work its way into Naruto’s heart despite the calm of the clearing. He has to take a few measured breaths and watch the clouds go by before he can think ( _if he screws this up, he’s sure he’ll be stuck for here for hours with no reply)_. 

“Sensei...”

He tries, feeling the strain of their entire history ( _of every little thing Kakashi has been weird about since he’s been back_ ) between them. Then, thinking harder,

“Kakashi,” 

He says,

“I want you to come with me.”

Silver hair tickles his forehead as Kakashi tips his head back, too. Naruto doesn’t try to sneak a peak at his face, however he’s desperately curious if he made the right move as the silence drags on.

Finally, Kakashi’s head turns against his. Angles so his breath blows blonde strands over Naruto’s cheeks. Then,

“I can’t.”

Is whispered right in Naruto’s ear. He grits his teeth and resists the urge to twist around. He’s played games of cat and mouse ( _with the bells, with D-rank missions, with extra lessons on jutsus that exploded whenever he tried them_ ) with this man before.

He just has to think. He has to think, because ‘I can’t’ didn’t mean no with Kakashi. It just meant he wasn’t allowed to by orders. There were always loopholes, like with Captain Yamato teaching him in place of his other senseis. 

( _Yamato, who Anko and Genma affectionately called Cat. Yamato, who called Kakashi Captain_ )

The realization hits him like a ton of bricks.

Breaking whatever rules existed between them ( _because **this** , Kakashi, had broken them first_), he twists sharply at the waist and rolls across the grass. Stumbles to his feet to tower over his friend ( _his **friend** , even if he didn’t see himself as that_).

“Look at me." 

Naruto demands. 

There’s a stubborn set to Kakashi’s jaw as he just barely tilts his head up. He refuses to get to his feet - clearly determined to stay beneath Naruto for this. As if he were a- 

Naruto crouches until he’s at Kakashi’s eye level. He doesn’t care how stupid it looks - he’s sure he can get his fury across anyway.

“I’m not calling you that.” 

Naruto swears, balling a fist less than an inch off from his heart,

“You can’t make me, you bastard.”

The stubborn set to Kakashi’s jaw shifts to become a grind beneath his mask. He angles his face away until Naruto can’t make out any of his features against the dark cloth. Then, perfectly calm, he says, 

“Then I’m staying here.”

Rejection, this time, doesn’t feel inevitable. It doesn’t feel like the usual hopeless punch of misery before Naruto continues his day unobstructed ( _there were only so many times you could drop everything because someone was mean to you for reasons you don’t understand. Eventually, you learn to move on_ ).

This time it feels calculated. And that hurts worse than ever ( _the kind of hurt he’s not sure how to move on from - the kind that involves choice_ ).

The worst part is that, this time, he’s pretty sure he’s not the only one to feel the sting of it.

Scowling and staggering to his feet, Naruto wipes at his eyes ineffectively. It didn’t matter if Kakashi saw him crying or not - he’d smell it on him anyway. There was no point in hiding it.

Not the way Kakashi tried to hide things.

“You’re not a beast.” 

Naruto chokes out, blinking back the burn in his eyes. He had planned on running away after that ( _advantages of leaving Konoha: taking his embarrassment and burying it a country away_ ) and licking his wounds in peace, but Kakashi beats him to the punch.

He’s left crying over a pile of leaves.

“Bastard.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Shikamaru:** Hm, I guess love is like the sun  
>  **Naruto:** *grins down at him*  
>  **Shikamaru:** Wow, uh, it sure is bright down here. Just gotta shade my eyes...in the shadow of a ravine...from a bright light directly above my face  
>  **Shikamaru:** *hiding his face in his arms and panicking*  
>  **Shikamaru:** Oh god he's like the sun
> 
>  **Kakashi:** Treat me in a way I've explicitly expressed I hate  
>  **Naruto:** Wh-what the hell? No????  
>  **Kakashi:** I am incapable of understanding this relationship then and, due to personal reasons, will be fleeing the scene  
>  **Gai:** I have to regularly give him things to complain about so this exact thing doesn't happen  
>  **Gai, crabwalking away with a blindfold on:** Don't worry kid, you'll figure it out
> 
> Has anyone else ever wondered how absolutely terrible interrogating Gai or Rock Lee must be? They smile at everything. It's downright unnerving. Their whole body language is buck wild. 
> 
> A lot of yin/yang release stuff and the specifics of mokutan (which is just supposed to be 'wood' re: earth+water) chakra doesn't...make the most sense in the context its presented in in canon. They are supposed to be bloodline abilities, but they are based on abilities anyone could theoretically have, and people later on learn a lot of abilities that are similar but not the same...? So now wood is just a pure form of 'nature' that is balancing all the divided chakras and is why mokutan is so powerful in comparison to say...mud release or like...entire bijuus. We're gonna work our way through chakra mechanics as Naruto learns about them in his own unique perspective here (and forms some wrong ideas). Please be patient with me! 
> 
> Also, re: sacred wood, here's where the 'No Kaguya Plotline' starts rearing its head. I'm totally down to clown with bijuu being both chakra entities AND essentially demons/youkai/spirits. Spirits are going to be a thing here. Curses exist in canon, so why not blessing? Why not spirits? Kaguya's plot kinda...came out of left field and runs weirdly counter to a lot of canon worldbuilding, and could've been good if there was proper buildup, so whatever I'm taking the bits I like and damn the rest. Also Kurama is a kitsune and I refuse to accept him as anything less than a chaotic entity.


	3. Descent Into Maelstrom (Part 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introductions are made, though some go better than others. First impressions are difficult, y'all, and sometimes they get a little homicidal.

It goes like this: Jiraiya hands Naruto a sealing contract as a distraction. He drinks with the toads and signs his name right under his teacher's. He’s impervious to alcohol, as luck would have it, and long after Jiraiya has passed out he’s left awake. 

It goes like this: the largest toad he’s ever seen watches him read the scroll. Answers him when he asks which symbols made up its name. Understands what he means when he points to some ink-based representation of self and soul.

It goes like this: Gamabunta is a beast with a name _(“That symbol is chakra. Mud, here - water and earth. Nature.” “So you’re...you’re chakra?” “It’s in me, yes.” “Like love?” Silence, a deep throaty laugh, and a pull on a pipe the size of Naruto’s apartment. “Love? I suppose you could say that, little minnow.”_ ). He knows words Naruto has never heard and places he’s never seen. He knows how seals bridge the gap of understanding between them.

It goes like this: Jiraiya wakes up and nothing has exploded. But his student has an ink brush and a determined look in his eye. There’s a symbol for reverse summoning painted on the grass in front of him and Jiraiya will be damned if he lets his godson summon himself out of existence. 

________

Sensing the world around himself with chakra, the starting point of Sagehood ( _and wasn’t that just crazy? Him, potentially becoming a Sage like Ero-sennin. He didn't really get what that entailed, but it would make him stronger_ ), only highlights the absence within for Naruto. The seal on his stomach is a great pulsing nothing that threatens to pull him in ( _to drown him and steal everything that he calls his own_ ).

He’d wanted someone smart to come along and prevent him from being stupid. He’d failed, and he could feel the stupid practically crawling out of his throat.

Every stroke he paints, every matrix Jiraiya corrects, every visit he pays to the toads’ mountain, make his pile of questions climb higher. It’s beginning to teeter. Its instability is making him feel unstable. 

It’s chaotic.

If the kyuubi’s soul, or some form of it, was sealed, what did that mean? The toads had part of themselves sealed into the summoning contracts. They couldn’t refuse the initial pull, but the demands of a summoner ended there. They could only pull on their physical form across particular planes and particular times.

There were limits. Limits defined by fractions ( _parts of names, phrases, beings_ ).

If the kyuubi was chained, held down so it couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, what were the limits? If the kyuubi could think once, could it not think any longer?

Did the kyuubi know the line between love and hate? Did it feel the desire to live so strongly it learned to hit first? 

Did the kyuubi have a name?

Naruto knows he’s obsessing. He rolls over the thought every night before he goes to sleep and considers it every morning as Jiraiya shows him the concentric patterns that control water. He can’t leave it alone.

To the core of him, he resents the Fox. He has lost everything he ever had to it. He’s lost things he could have had to it, too ( _Jiraiya had started telling him...stories. A history in sparse footnotes. Ones that began to paint a picture of his mother, even as they skimmed over his father, and where she was from. What she **was**_ ).

But, if the Fox has a name, if the very roots of it could be locked away by someone else’s hand... 

That wasn’t fair. Wasn’t right. 

( _The idea frightened him_ )

( _He could only wonder how the Fox felt_ ) 

________

There’s a sewer in his dreams. He thinks he’s seen it once before, facing down Captain Yamato, his patience wearing thin. Yes, he thinks he’s been there before, watching Team Seven fall in the mist and knowing he’d join them soon.

The water is murky and moves like sludge. It doesn’t reflect any light. Not that it matters - it’s dark down here.

There’s a gilded cage, though, that glows just enough for him to make it out. He can see a wall of orange within.

The water is rising. Cold at first, but boiling into steam where it touches the cage.

“You’re the reason I’m alone.”

Naruto whispers bitterly. The water is soaking into the skin of his seal. It boils there, too, and the feeling is familiar. 

“You’re the reason I’ll always be alone.”

He whispers, and is submerged.

________

It goes like this: Naruto learns what little history Jiraiya is willing to give him. It’s patchy and censored, ringing of frustration, of things better experienced than spoken of. It makes him feel lost. It makes him hold his clan name carefully behind his teeth ( _Uzumaki, singular, alone_ ). It gives him more questions than it answers.

It goes like this: he doesn’t seal like Jiraiya does. The roots are the same, but the branches are different. Eventually, his matrixes can no longer be corrected because there’s nothing to correct. They work. They both have to accept that they are simply different.

Jiraiya doesn’t understand names. Naruto doesn’t understand sealing conventions. The outcome of either of them trying the other’s style is never quite right.

It goes like this: Naruto’s history is in shambles. His training is, too. It’s only fitting that they visit a ruin.

That way their surroundings will match what they both feel inside. 

________

In the desolate square at the heart of Uzushio, Naruto kneels alone, shifted less than one inch to the right. There is history here he should be able to access ( _rumours whispered along Jiraiya’s network for years – years he could’ve told Naruto about_ ), through the kyuubi’s chakra or through his blood, but first he’d been told to meditate.

He’s pretty sure Jiraiya just doesn’t want to see the desolation and betrayal on his face. He’s pretty sure Jiraiya’s seen that expression often enough to last him a lifetime, anyway.

So Naruto kneels, knees digging into a mosaic too thoroughly ruined to interpret, and tries to spread out his senses ( _to the underground vaults and symbols that mark scrolls no one else had attempted to steal yet, or so he's told_ ). 

He can’t focus, though. There’s a great sucking emptiness in the core of him and  **he can’t stop thinking about it**.

Despite himself, Naruto’s senses turn inwards. His chakra folds inwards, too.

The lake sits beneath his mind’s eye. The surface is perfectly flat and mirrors his disgruntled expression back up at him. The placidity of it all pisses him off.

Taking a single salt-soaked breath, Naruto sinks. 

________

There’s a sewer he’s seen before. Dark and humid like the mouth of some great beast. It’s eerily quiet and Naruto swears he can feel the crushing pressure of the pool hanging directly above it.

He doesn’t want to be here, but he can’t bring himself to leave. Words are pounding against the inside of his chest and begging to disturb the silence.

“You’re the only thing in my life I’ve ever been allowed to hate.”

He finds himself admitting to the darkness ( _wincing as his voice echoes with a flat dissonant quality_ ). The water laps at his ankles and Naruto considers the sludgy quality of it. Its absolute lack of colour.

( _A darkness burning)_

“Could you feel it?” 

He asks, suppressing the urge to slap off the malice staining his shoes with his bare hands,

“Did you know?”

Nothing shifts in the darkness. The great thing is the cage doesn’t speak. It doesn’t even look at him.

The water boils. He’s thrown out.

________

The scrolls are sparse, but the legible ones confirm the basics of how Naruto has been thinking about fuinjutsu. They also give him a few interesting questions about water chakra and what else might be hidden in a long-dead city ( _underneath the bones Jiraiya refuses to let him look at, let alone move – cursed by forgotten spirits, is what he says_ ).

They aren’t enough to lull him to sleep, though.

________

The water in the sewer is unpleasant. Naruto is willing to splash through it, however, to get closer to the golden cage. Up close, it gives off enough light that he can make out symbols scratched into every inch of metal.

The water boils. He’s thrown out.

_________

 

They leave Uzushio when the wind follows little paper strips between Naruto’s fingers and the rain comes with it ( _water coming to him almost willingly, riding on other elements_ ). They leave when Naruto has mapped out the village limits and realized it was built on a pattern that is achingly familiar. Jiraiya practically pushes him out of the gates when Naruto points out the fractals - repetitions of the same shape rippling outwards like a stone tossed in a pond.

He’s pretty sure the grooves in the centre square are meant to be activated by blood. Jiraiya isn’t willing to let him try and see what happens.

_________

   
The cage in the sewer repeats just like the alleys and buildings of Uzushio. Its symbols twist around themselves dizzingly until the shadows swallow them whole.

He wonders which symbol represents the kyuubi.

The water boils. He’s thrown out.

_________

 

The Land of Whirlpools, he discovers, wasn’t always called that. It was once the Land of Tides. Uzushio was settled in what historians called the narrows.

Uzushio came first. The whirlpools came second. 

Uzu: a vortex. Swirls and spirals of the same pattern, tapering off into nothing.

Uzumaki.

What exactly did that mean the first time someone said it?

( _What was its history?)_

________

 

Squinting just barely allowed Naruto to see what lay beyond the bars of the cage. A sea of orange with no face. Claws; long and tipped in the same darkness that filled the water. 

Glimmers of gold wrapped around what could only be the Fox’s neck.

Collars. Collars and chains inside of a cage buried in sewer ( _drowned in a cold lake of silence_ ).

The water boils, but this time Naruto leaves on his own accord.

_________

 

Pouring over their meagre haul would take only weeks. Learning their contents probably wouldn’t take much longer. Unfortunately, their training trip was never meant to stay a training trip ( _because despite his rank, Tsunade isn’t likely to treat Naruto like a genin anymore. Not after Sasuke_ ).

Akatsuki has made movements that showed up in Jiraiya’s network. Movements too near Suna for anyone’s comfort.

Jiraiya looks pained at the news. Naruto, though...

He’s ready to go. He  **wants**  to go.

Even if he doesn’t see Sasuke, even if Akatsuki avoids them entirely, Gaara was the one person seated firmly in the same boat he was. The one person who wouldn’t lie to him about  **beasts**  that spoke to you.

He owes Gaara the answers he’s beginning to piece together. And, maybe, just maybe, his friend can help him finish the puzzle.

__________

 

“We’re just going to be gathering information.”

Jiraiya warns Naruto as they pack up camp ( _emptying and repacking his own bag twice, running his fingers over the fabric of their tent repeatedly_ ),

“That and some guard detail for the village while Konoha figures out if it should make a move or not. They haven’t exactly been forthcoming with Suna about the extent of Akatsuki’s actions.”

The ‘towards you’ goes unsaid ( _though Naruto hears it loud and clear in the way Jiraiya sneaks a peak at Naruto’s chest before emptying his bag out in the dirt again_ ).

“We probably won’t even find anything.”

Jiraiya continues, the pace of his words steadily increasing ( _his fingers snag a loose thread on a pair of pants and he looks seconds from flinging them into the trees_ ),

“We won’t have long to wait before a team arrives from Konoha anyway. Maybe you can stop in with the Kazekage’s son for a short chat before we leave again. I’m thinking Ame-“

Naruto tunes Jiraiya’s words out. He’s pretty sure they won’t be leaving again after this, no matter what Jiraya says. They’ll be assigned to stay on in Suna, knowing the old granny hokage, and he’ll probably be set up to train bijuu chakra with Gaara. Kept away from Konoha but not out of her reach - she was getting nervous.

Though there was nothing to worry about, yet.

As long as Sasuke didn’t show up, the rest of Akatsuki wouldn’t bother with him. He wasn’t theirs to kill.

( _And there was refuge in that. The same refuge he’d taken thousands of time as a child from hateful stares and even more hateful actions_ )

( _He wasn’t theirs to kill_ )

________

Naruto never thought that Jiraiya was the one in danger. He never thought that the danger Jiraya was in would have nothing to do with him ( _Jinchuriki, Uzumaki, marked by despicable things_ ).

He’d forgotten that Jiraiya had a history of his own.

He wasn’t likely to forget the histories of other Shinobi again. They were written in their names ( _Jiraiya, sannin, informant, sensei_ ). Written in blood ( _staining a jacket, **his jacket** , the second real gift he’d ever received in his life-_). 

Written in so much blood.

 

________

It was an accident. That’s the worst part. All of Naruto’s life and near-deaths have been a part of someone’s great plan, time and again. Every casualty had been calculated. There was always some clear way to improve or some sign he should have seen ( _Sasuke drifting, the cold eyes of an academy teacher, a puddle on a clear day_ ). 

At least, he thought that was how it worked. 

Jiraiya was an accident. There was no nefarious plot or ambush in the woods. Just bad timing.

The wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And Naruto hadn’t even been there.  
 

////////

 

 _“_ Why do you even write this garbage?”

Naruto asks, tapping an ink brush against a page and smirking at the outraged squawk he gets in response.

“Those are my rough drafts!”

Jiraiya hisses, pulling the papers away from Naruto and carefully searching them for ink splatter, 

“Garbage, feh! This is literature, you snot-nosed little pervert.”

Naruto gives his teacher a flat stare and extends a hand to beckon for the papers back. Once they’re in his hand, he deadpans, 

“Pervert? You have a teenager editing your pornography.”

Now it’s Jiraiya’s turn to fix him with an unimpressed look.

“You’re 18.”

He states flatly,

“And you’ve been considered an adult since you were, what, 16? Lived on your own since you were 10? You’re practically older than I am.”

Naruto glances at his teacher’s snow-white hair and arches an eyebrow. He gets an arched one right back.

Huffing, Naruto covers a smile in the high neck of his new jacket. It has more black than orange, which he isn’t a fan of, but he can respect Jiraiya’s attempt to make him more fashionable. Besides, he loved gifts ( _he could barely bring himself to take it off_ ).

“Really though,”

He starts again, scuffing the toe of his sandal on the dusty road they’d been walking,

“Why write erotica? You’re a lecher, but most perverts don’t publish their fantasies. Unless that **is** your fantasy.”

“It’s to pass information along my network.” 

Jiraiya sighs, locking his hands behind his head. Naruto groans,

“You could do that with cookbooks. And don’t say porn is less likely to be noticed - even I can see that you care about the plot,”

Naruto taps a page he has sorted out of the pile, 

“Here. This guy is a dead ringer for the old lady. I can practically feel her yelling and throwing things at me. I mean, c’mon;”

He begins to read aloud,

“ _Kuroko had been a great man once. Tall and towering, arms and legs like tree trunks, and powerful as a pounding waterfall. Willing to pound women into soaking wet waterfalls, too. Now he stumbled down poorly lit roads, drunk on another night of ill-planned gambles, without any care for the sight of fair maidens that flocked to him still. He hadn’t known lust of the flesh for years. But a soft call for help draws his unwilling eye...and his soft heart_.”

Naruto paused, snorting,

“Who do you think you’re kidding, old man?”

Jiraiya scowled at him and snatched his papers back again. Then he shifted his scowl to his own transparent prose ( _he was lucky Tsunade didn’t bother reading anything he wrote, though Naruto kind of hoped she would some day. He didn’t see why things like this should ever be kept a secret_ ). 

“Why would you think a male character is anything like her, huh? I bet she’d be offended.” 

The great and powerful ( _petulant_ ) sannin mumbles. There’s colour climbing in his cheeks. 

Naruto rolls his eyes. 

“We’re Shinobi. Does anyone really care about that?”

He responds. There were so many things going on in the Shinobi world ( _so many kekkei genkai pushing the boundaries of ‘normal’ and attitudes that shoved them even further_ ) that gender seemed inconsequential. Sometimes it **was** inconsequential on missions.

Jiraiya grunts in assent, clearly thinking of the Shinobi he’s met who seamlessly fit into any role, before gaining a mischievous tilt to his mouth.

“Tsunade tries to make it obvious she’s a woman.”

He points out. The gesture that goes with the comment is one Naruto pointedly ignores to focus on chewing his nails instead. 

“That doesn’t mean she could never be anything else. Or that no man could ever be like her.” 

Naruto counters, lowering his hand from his mouth to pick at the front of his jacket instead,

“I mean, I-“

He stops. Stalls out.

Naruto had been about to bring up his transformation ( _the one that had gotten him this training in the first place_ ). He’d been about to point out the ways in which he was like his female self - the ways she was like him in return. The fine lines that changed and the things that stayed the same.

Only he hasn’t been her in two and a half years. He doesn’t know what she’s like anymore. Because she’d been -

( _He’d - she’d - wanted to be a mother. Had wanted to be able to be gentle, like the civilian women were allowed to be, like kunoichi learned to fake except with each other. Had wanted family with-)_

He’d carved out a part of himself and hadn’t even realized. No one had.

( _Was it too late, now? Would he ever be that comfortable again?)_

Jiraiya eyes him in the awkward pause that follows. There’s no empathy in him, because as much as Tsunade was a woman, Jiraiya is man ( _he tries so hard to be a man, and Naruto wonders about Orochimaru sometimes, and how very differently he presents than either of his old teammates_ ). There’s sympathy, though. 

The old man wipes his mouth in a lengthy tired gesture. He slumps, sighing.

“I wanted to write a book. Just because, really. Traveling alone got...boring, sometimes. I didn’t take anyone along, you see.” 

Jiraiya says, wiping at his mouth again and worrying his lower lip with his teeth,

“The first book was different. The one your parents named you after.” 

Naruto tenses, but doesn’t interrupt as Jiraiya shuffles over to pat his shoulder.

“I wrote that one when I was trying to find something to believe in. And I found it - peace, y’know? A bit too late, but...well. The rest were...” 

Jiraya trails off and Naruto chuckles.

“The rest were porn.”

Naruto finishes for him. Jiraiya rolls his eyes and pinches his cheek until Naruto is struggling to get away.

“The rest were porn.”

Jiraiya agrees,

“It was just supposed to be a fun thing, I guess. Then I got to the ending and-“

This time, his hand wanders towards his mouth before moving to cover his whole face instead. Jiraiya takes a moment to mutter inaudibly to himself. Then, groaning,

“I’ve never belonged to someone. Porn is supposed to have a happy ending – but mine, they sleep around and almost settle, then boom! They just don’t. I can’t write an ending like that to save my life.” 

Jiraiya’s awkwardly fluttering hands fly up into his hair. 

“I can’t even imagine what that’s like.”

Jiraya goes on,

“Even if I wanted to. The timing has never been - ugh.”  

That doesn’t seem quite right to Naruto. In the time he’s known the old pervert, one thing has been overwhelmingly obvious: Jiraiya has loved exactly one person consistently in his life. He’s been loyal to that for decades, even without seeing her, and always managed to keep some idea of where she was.

He was pretty sure Jiraiya has imagined a committed relationship. He was pretty sure he was actually in one, whether Jiraiya knew it or not ( _even if he went out of his way to stay far far away_ ). 

“I don’t see why they always need to have sex with other people first.” 

Naruto says, shifting the topic a little ( _having mercy on his godfather, who has always seemed to know more than him, but knows so much less about this_ ). Jiraiya scoffs and finally lets go of the hair he’s been pulling on.

“It’s boring if they’re just having sex with the same person the entire time.”

Jiraiya tells him,

“No one wants to read that. They have to meet the good ones last.”

“I would.”

Naruto ignores the way Jiraiya seems to wince at the idea of him actually reading erotica ( _as if he hasn’t had his fair share of sex_ ). He just shrugs and continues,

“You have some good scenarios. There’s funny sex, loss of virginity, bad positions - it’s relatable. I felt like that. But I felt like that with one person - all of it.” 

Jiraiya is back to sighing and half-covering his mouth like he could shove this whole conversation back inside of it ( _Naruto wonders if he’ll suffocate like that. Maybe this was why Jiraya never talked about feelings_ ). 

“Not a lot of Shinobi had what you had. It’s a lot of nameless faces and the...the little moments between.”

He tries to explain, 

“I watch civilians a lot. Write in some voyeurs from time to time-“ 

Naruto snorts. Jiraiya tsks at him.

“I wrote voyeurs a lot, ok? There’s this element of ‘normal people’s lives’ – not that we aren’t normal, though, uh - they show those intimate moments some people have with someone vulnerable, but, I,"  
  
He stumbles over his words,   
  
"They have with everyone they watch.”

There’s a pause and Jiraiya’s face contorts awkwardly. He pointedly looks away from Naruto ( _who is seconds away from asking if Jiraiya has ever joined anyone he’s been watching because he’s deathly curious_ ).

“Sometimes I think I’m trying to figure out where someone terribly selfish would fit into those…moments. Whether or not they could have them for themselves, though they never do in the end. The timing is just - ugh.”

He admits. Pauses, thinks, and then goes on more quietly, 

“Icha Icha says love exists for bad people, too, in a way. Even if they don’t deserve it.”

Naruto muffles a frustrated noise at that and smacks a hand onto his godfather’s already half-covered mouth.

“What do you even have to do to deserve love? I don’t get what’s worth it or not.”

Naruto whines, 

“It doesn’t make any sense! Love doesn’t have anything to do with what **you** do or don’t do. It’s just - it’s just you!”

He steals a look at Jiraiya and is somewhat reassured to see his expression going sheepish instead of confused.

“I’m not too sure either.” 

Jiraiya admits ( _more than a little awkwardly. Sometimes he didn’t seem his age at all - Naruto could’ve been looking in a mirror right now. Or back in time to when he was abouuuut 12_ ),

“Though the sentiment makes sense. Love being redeeming, I mean. It’s a nice thought.”

Naruto hums a little, unsure if he agrees or not, before he’s distracted by another more pressing thought.

“Kakashi reads your books. Like…constantly. Even though he hates you.” 

Naruto says, frowning as an idea starts to take hold ( _serial rejections, a lack of personal connections-),_ but Jiraiya slaps a hand over his mouth.

“We are,” 

Jiraiya hisses, reddening furiously,

“Nothing alike! Don’t compare me to him!” 

“I wasn’t! I was just-“

But Naruto’s words are muffled against his teacher’s hands, and the thought is soon forgotten.

///////

 

Sometimes, on nights that are clear and full of stars, Jiraiya teaches Naruto things that aren’t jutsus. Some of the lessons have no merit at all. Some of them are just conversations. 

He learns Jiraiya’s thoughts about love, peace, and...beasts.

He wonders if this is what having a father is like.

////////

 

In some ways, Jiraiya is like Iruka. He teaches things that are pointless or don’t seem like lessons at all, but add layers to Naruto’s name ( _it’s weird to acknowledge Jiraiya had a role in giving it to him in the first place_ ). Iruka gave him the symbols to write it with, his headband and a path forward, a step towards his dream ( _Naruto Uzumaki, future hokage_ ). Jiraiya gave him stories of his parents ( _deeply personal the rare times he mentions his father, filled with little details, but somehow richer about his mother with the same last name_ ) and Uzushio.

But while Iruka seemed to struggle to learn with him, struggle to protect him, walking almost by his side, Jiraiya seemed twenty steps ahead with his enemies already defeated.

Naruto had never thought of Iruka like a father.

 

////////

 

“You know...”

Jiraiya mumbles past the ink brush balanced precariously on his top lip,

“I think you’re right about this guy.”

Naruto hums questioningly, not looking up from his editing task ( _Jiraiya kept saying things that didn’t mean what he thought they meant. Naruto didn’t care about the dictionary, he cared about tone, damn it all_ ).

“One of the main four; Shuu. You said he only ever hurts Yuri.”

Jiraiya explains. Naruto’s hum this time is irritated as he replies,

“You keep excusing his actions. She’s seen him sleeping with other people repeatedly now. He called her plain and weak. It’s rude.” 

The rustling of paper fills the space between them.

“Did I make Yuri too stupid? Or stupid at all? I feel bad now - she isn’t really supposed to be funny.”

Jiraiya says, mostly to himself, and chews on the end of his ink brush in frustration. Naruto glances up at him.

“I don’t think she’s stupid.” 

Naruto says,

“You make it seem like Shuu’s going to change until the last chapter. It comes out of nowhere when he leaves with the serving boy and never comes back -  **that’s**  stupid.” 

Jiraiya bites down hard on the brush and grimaces, spitting out some shards of wood ( _swearing under his breath before telling Naruto not to pick up any of the language_ ).

“I wanted her to be hope.” 

He mutters, tangling splintered fingers into his hair,

“But it made no sense for him to change at the end! She’s not the type to give up just because someone hurt her, though, so she didn’t move on. She was one of my favorites  **because**  she keeps trying...”

Naruto chuckles a bit bitterly.

“Don’t look at me.”

He says when Jiraiya shoots him a pleading glance,

“I dunno what would change his mind. Obviously not love.”

 

////////

 

“Love doesn’t change anyone who doesn’t want to change.” 

Naruto announces, halfway through the swing of a kunai towards a toad. Jiraiya, who has snuck up behind one of his clones and not his main body, grunts questioningly before landing a hit.

“I mean,”

Naruto dodges around several smaller toads,

“Maybe love is like energy. Or food. It gives you power to do things, but doesn’t do them for you.”

He slides underneath one of his clones and slaps a water seal onto their ankle. The other Naruto grins at him viciously.

“So Shuu - that guy? He loves Yuri but he won’t change for her, because he doesn’t have a reason to. He doesn’t care that she’s sad because she isn’t going to leave him.”

Naruto and his clone circle the toad as he makes an earth seal surreptitiously ( _one bound in fire, just like the water one was in wind. He still couldn’t use chakra paths other than his affinities all that well, but he could do this_ ). 

“So even though he left at the end of the book,”

He funnels chakra into his seal and watches his clone do the same ( _stepping in a pattern following his and dragging lines into the dirt_ ), 

“He’s going to come back someday, right?”

He glances over his shoulder at Jiraiya, occupied now by a clone wearing a one-tailed cloak and another harvesting nature chakra with its own toad summons. His teacher grunts in what’s probably agreement.

“Maybe that’s their happy ending, then.”

Naruto says, clapping his hands and cackling as a mud trap sucks the toad in before drying instantly,

“He always comes back to her.”

Jiraiya yelps as the clones he’s been fighting disappear with a pop, Naruto standing in their place holding a paper seal of storms aloft with a crooked grin. He rolls his eyes and holds his hands aloft in surrender.

“It still sounds like she’d be better off without him.” 

Jiraiya mutters, affectionately ruffling Naruto’s hair. 

“She didn’t give up hope, even though he hurt her. Maybe it’ll work out for the best. Maybe it won’t.” 

Naruto shrugs, accepting the water Jiraiya hands him and passes over his seal for examination ( _he’s been coming up with new ones based on pulling water in with wind. They’re untested, so Jiraiya insists on looking them over even if the patterns are unfamiliar. Water is still…tempermental sometimes_ ), 

“What makes it happy or sad is what she believes, in the end.” 

Jiraiya freezes in position ( _hunched over the seal of storms like a gargoyle_ ). His eyes go suspiciously wet and shiny, and he clears his throat as Naruto watches, bewildered. 

“You sound exactly like your mother.”

Jiraiya croaks, turning away. Naruto has nothing else to say to that. Apparently, neither does Jiraiya.  
 

////////

Later, Naruto will wonder if they were ever talking about two characters in Jiraiya’s novel. He’ll wonder if they were even talking about themselves ( _Sasuke, Orochimaru_ ).

Sometimes, it felt like they were talking about every Shinobi he’s ever known ( _and every Shinobi he hasn’t; his mother a faceless figure in his memory, giving birth to a child when she knew it would make her seal weak, when she knew that it would hurt_ ).

  
////////

Later, Naruto will wonder whether or not Jiraiya would’ve changed his book to have Yuri keep believing. If he would’ve given her a kind of happy ending.  
  
He thinks, long after everything is over, that Jiraiya wouldn’t have. Because as much as he believed in peace, in love, he never believed it would be returned to him ( _an unopened letter to Tsunade stained in blood and near-illegible, folded carefully over his heart, less than one inch to the right_ ).

Jiraiya kept hoping, but the people who left him and came back to him hurt him again ( ** _killed him_** ). Naruto wonders what he believed in the end.

 

////////

It goes like this: wind and earth and fire make sand. Naruto thinks he can place a series of seals on a sand clone of Gaara, one that can replicate his sand shield, and potentially fool Akatsuki’s scouts. 

It goes like this: several trials are unmitigated disasters. Fire and wind work wonderfully for him while seperate, but something about the way he’s putting them together consumes the earth sign entirely. No matter how many matrixes attempt to dilute the power of his chakra, something is bound to explode ( _and form glass. Very very sharp glass_ ).

It goes like this: Jiraiya goes to find him a new training ground an hour’s run from the village gates. He’s looking for a place with a view of the city, flat and empty, but not exposed like most of the desert. He succeeds, however he’s not the only person looking.

History has caught up with him. It’s an accident.

He’s barely breathing when Naruto finds him - relying on summons-gathered nature chakra and sensing that he’s barely begun to get a grasp on ( _distracted by playing with water and words-)._ It makes him slow. It makes the difference of minutes ( _of a lifetime_ ). 

There’s no one left to fight, though Jiraiya gives him names. Names of his attackers ( _names that he says fondly, sadly, because the people Jiraiya loved always came back. They always came back to hurt him. Nagato, Konan - motivations, stories, losses he won’t forget_ ). The names of Naruto’s parents. 

Naruto’s name, too. A word that hasn’t been his since Jiji died. Not with anyone but Jiraya.  
  
Kid ( _nearly 19 and still a child, at least in this man’s eyes_ ) 

“You have your mother’s words.”

A rusty chuckle,

“You don’t look it, but you’re an Uzumaki, kid.”

There’s no one left to fight, but Naruto calls on the kyuubi anyway. He goes to the sewer and pounds on the bars of his gilded cage. He begs for the power to fight ( _kill, hate, anything_ ) an absent enemy, and he receives no answer.

The water boils and he is alone. 

__________

 

Tsunade accepts the news with wintery calm. She does not ask Naruto to complete his mission. She does not ask him to come home and grieve.

Instead, she sends him off to learn the skill that would’ve made a difference of minutes ( ** _of a lifetime_** ). She sends him off to take one of Jiraiya’s many names - toad sage. 

The hokage won’t admit that she’s grieving or that she blames him for not being there. Not in words anyone else can understand. He hears it in the title he’s inheriting early, though.

It’s ok. He understands. 

Naruto blames himself, too. And, like Tsunade is practically telling him to, he’ll make sure it won’t happen again. Not when there was a difference of minutes.

( _Minutes, a lifetime_ )

( _He’ll become a sage. It’s just another name he doesn’t want_ )

__________

 

He sits by the mountain and tries to meditate. The toads gather chakra for him and speak of their essence. They teach him, in their plane of existence, what it means to be of the mud. What it means to be at peace with the way things are - to adapt to the world and never change it.

( _They tell him death is inevitable_ ) 

( _He tells them he knows, but it still makes him sad_ )

( _Makes him angry, when he could have prevented it. When there was a chance and he couldn’t take it because he hadn’t known it was there_ )

( _They tell him to be sad, to accept it, to move on. They tell him his time will come, too. That reunion will come_ )

( _Naruto doesn’t think he moves on like the toads do. There are names emblazoned on his heart. They shine like beacons and make him move forward. Make him get better. He hopes they’re proud of him every second he’s alive - he gives his **life** to them instead of his **death**_ )

He sits by the mountain and tries to meditate, but the wind is loud and warm and smells like salt. It says he should not be here. It says he’s never been meant for a stationary solid life. 

( _It pushes at his back and dries out the toads. There’s something sinister about the way it seems to chatter and chirp_ )

He’s never held still long enough for water and earth to settle in his soul. Whatever mud that forms there ( _fortune, happiness, acceptance_ ) cracks as soon as he takes off running. And he can’t stop running.

The wind is blazing hot and howls, dust devils tearing across the mountain, and it **screams**  at him. 

”Foolish child,”

Lashes across his skin and bakes the mud coating it,

“Change awaits you somewhere far from here. You cannot rest.”

 

_________

 

Naruto sends a toad to Konoha with a request and a stained letter that isn’t his ( _mostly illegible, but with love between the lines_ ). He gets a reply in the form of a jounin tracking team with the wind at their backs and a length of ribbon, red as blood ( _the name ‘Kushina’ embroidered in cerulean blue_ ).

He inks a seal of storms into it with chakra cracking at his fingertips ( _looping into the lines of his mother’s name as if it were part of the matrix. He can almost feel the water curling around every letter before it turns heavy and ozonous_ ). When he slides it around his throat, it reminds him of the kyuubi’s collar.

He’s collared himself.

Naruto won’t destroy the ribbon unless he has no other choice. Tsunade gave a piece of his mother to him to ensure he’d come home ( _the wind whistles from the direction of Konoha, carrying with it warmth that he clutches desperately. Naruto Uzumaki, future hokage. That name was still his. No one had taken it from him_ ). It was a restraint.

He takes a moment to just...breathe. He still had a home with her, even if both of them needed to grieve alone.

Kakashi watches him quietly from his position next to an Akimichi jounin and her dogs. His one eye traces over the length of ribbon, the seal flowing into his mother’s name over the vulnerable skin of his throat, before squeezing shut.

( _There’s a flash of something dark there_ )

( _Dark and heavy that brushes against Naruto before it’s turned inward like a knife. Kakashi always seems to be hurting himself, though Naruto never knows why._  

Genma and Yamato look to Kakashi for orders. And, like a thousand times before, Hound rises to the surface in his place.

__________

 

Hound drives them all into the ground mercilessly, but they find Jiraiya’s killers in a matter of days. This encounter isn’t accidental. It’s not an ambush, either.

Pain knows they are coming. He wanted them to. 

__________

   
The paths of Pain are still depleted. Jiraiya, turns out, killed two. Knew them in another life ( _history catching up to him, the people he knew always coming back to hurt him_ ). Some of those that remain are enough to scare Naruto, though.

There’s lightning and the corpse of a man that Pain, Nagato, once called a friend. It’s sickening ( _how does one puppet a body? You steal the heart. How does one puppet a heart? You steal the soul. It’s all in a name. It’s all in a name - Nagato has given up his and taken up Pain_ ).

Lightning makes the seal pressed against Naruto’s throat sing. His storms were all wind and heated rising air, whirling into rain, crackling with natural electricity. He didn’t make lightning chakra and couldn’t even form it through bending the rules with seals. He made the real deal...or so he thought, before the symbols reacted like this ( _like it was going to consume all the energy from Pain’s path to birth a typhoon_ ). 

It makes him nervous. It shows.

That path corners him while the others are occupied. It tells him a story that has him thinking of yellow skies and the discordant chirping of birds ( _a darkness burning, sludge water boiling_ ). It’s so familiar it hurts. 

A friend’s death. Loss. Peace through pain.  
  
( _A family obliterated. Sasuke calling himself an avenger, but really looking for-)_

Teaching the world a lesson, like Pain was the only one in the position to teach.  
  
( _Peace. An ending. The quiet he was convinced followed revenge…or only followed death. Naruto had never been sure which Sasuke was really aiming for_ )

Like Pain was the only one who knew what it was like to hurt.  
  
( _Uchiha: a fan for the flames. His hurts burning long after Naruto’s had begun to temper like steel. Melting what little peace Naruto had built for himself with a hand around his heart. Trying to drag him back down, trying to teach him, as if Naruto couldn’t understand having **no one** -_)

Naruto feels a lurch in his chest ( _less than an inch to the right_ ) that speaks of malice. It pierces straight through any picture Pain might’ve been painting of justice.

Kami, it burns him ( _there’s a silent still lake in him, cool to the touch, that’s beginning to bubble_ ). 

“That’s not peace.”

He hisses, pulling one tail around him like a cloak ( _letting fire eat away at the electrical arcs reaching for his heart_ ),

“ **That’s fear**.” 

___________

 

Naruto is still scared of lightning. It’s a weakness that gets exploited when his emotions get the best of him.

There’s a seal around his neck that will destroy him, probably, but it will take this path out, too. Naruto reaches a clawed finger up to touch it, canines biting through his lower lip, when his line of sight is interrupted.

He no longer sees Pain’s path rushing to end his life. He doesn’t see it because he sees Kakashi’s back instead ( _like so many other times. A cycle he’s doomed to repeat_ ). 

And then he sees blood.   
  
( _Friend-killer Kakashi. What a ridiculous name to give a man trying his best to die_ )

 

_________

 

“This isn’t peace!”

His body meets the dirt again. Corrosive chakra devouring the ground beneath his feet as his tracking team retreats,

“It’s fear!”

His shoulders square as he heaves himself to his feet again. Naruto’s arms are burnt and his lips are bitten through. The lightning path is gone, but there are still others and Pain is strong. His companion, the girl with blue hair ( _Konan, her name is Konan, and she wasn’t always like this-_ ), is just as powerful.

Genma falls with Kakashi and Naruto roars.

__________

 

The wind is deafening him to anything but Pain’s words, playing on loop in his head. Naruto is sure he won’t survive, sure he should pull on the ribbon, but **those words** ( _peace through pain_ ) keep ripping into the scar on his chest. 

“People will bow to you.”

He spits out, blood evaporating in the wave of heat surrounding him ( _he’s done something without seal paper – something he can’t use around Konan. He doesn’t know what. All he knows is that the grass is burning and he has a moment of respite from razor sharp chakra paper and paths of Pain_ ),

“And then what? They want peace from you, and then what? Do you terrorize them forever?”

The body of Yahiko stares at him with cold dead eyes. It hasn’t been allowed to rest. Nagato has held onto it, selfishly dragged it through the world to deliver sermons about peace, when it has been stripped of that ( _even in death_ ). 

“In what world is that peace? You’ll be the war they’re fighting! You’ll be a constant source of pain, and the second you stop they’ll be fighting each other again!”

His chakra reserves are falling. Somehow, Pain has more than him. Maybe Konan is supplying him somehow. Maybe Pain really is the Sage of Six Paths and is draining the earth. Naruto can hardly see well enough to check ( _red, red, red in his vision_ ).

“You haven’t taught anyone anything! All you’ve done is show them how to  **hate**  more than ever before.” 

There’s a wildfire roaring under his feet and sapping all his strength. He thinks he set it with his own hands. His seal papers remain folded in his pocket, but his clawed fingers are tipped in red and the air feels heavy enough to write on. 

“Love isn’t enough. Hate isn’t enough.” 

A symbol hangs in front of him. It burns crimson against the orange of the flames and has chaos written in its jagged edges. The matrix around it has a gap in the corner where his blood had stopped flowing so freely. 

It’s probably going to explode - everything containing chaos seems to when it’s no longer in perpetual motion ( _trapped in eddies and tides until it tapers out_ ).

“Pain isn’t enough.”

The fire wobbles.

“People have to choose peace for themselves. You can’t make them – it won’t **mean** anything to them.”

It wavers and Naruto feels all the air before him leech away. All he has left is what’s in his lungs.

“This isn’t peace. It’s fear. It’s  **fear**.” 

He calls out to the Fox. There’s no answer.

 He breathes out wind and the fire burns out of control. 

___________

 

Yahiko’s body burns, but survives. The kid, on the other hand, looks like he might not make it. His companions are in much the same condition ( _two of them already fallen_ ).

Konan looks at Yahiko’s body.

It’s burnt.

Yahiko is dead. Died from stabbing, bled to death, but here he is. Burnt.

Damaged beyond belief.

Damaged because Nagato couldn’t let him go ( _because she couldn’t let him go, either_ ).

_“This isn’t peace. It’s fear.”_

Akatsuki had helped once. It balanced power, gave those who were too strong to know empathy some restraint, hung above the heads of the unjust as a threat.

That was fear, too. It was fear she believed in. 

_“This isn’t peace. It’s fear.”_

It was fear that could be challenged. It was fear that could be fought. It was fear that could be avoided entirely ( _Yahiko extending a gentle hand, Akatsuki providing some lost soul a place to rest. Konan herself giving gifts of paper flowers and butterflies too delicate for weaponry_ ).

Yahiko’s body was burnt, Nagato had been hurt yet again, and Jiraya was dead. Love hadn’t stopped any of it ( _and by all her heart, she still loved. She loved Yahiko as if he weren’t gone. She loved Nagato as if he were_ ). Hatred had caused it. 

Peace...peace hadn’t been found in any of it. 

She thinks the boy ( _Naruto Uzumaki - he’d introduced himself by name with too-sharp teeth bared and ink soaking the ground beneath his feet. An Uzumaki of all things_ ) has never known peace. She thinks he wants it, too ( _desperation making his voice come rough and breathy, words too fast, tears drying off his cheeks_ ).

He hadn’t chosen peace, though. He’d come for them. He’d been afraid of them.

**_“This isn’t peace. This isn’t peace. This isn’t-“_ **

He wasn’t even afraid of the bijuu he summoned through his skin, but he was afraid of them. The Uchiha’s Jinchuriki, marked in hatred, marked for death, and left alone without a mentor, was afraid of them ( _and came to kill them anyway_ ).

Konan is tired. She hasn’t known peace in a very long time. She wants...

She wants Jiraiya’s last student to know it in her place. She wants, so badly, for someone to correct their mistakes. 

“Nagato...”

She calls out. His real body is coming out of the woods, headed towards Yahiko, likely to fix him up enough to use again. She watches him, ruined legs barely able to drag himself forwards, and wonders why he won’t just sit. Why he won’t lay down in the aftermath when no one else was about to attack him. 

“Nagato.” 

She calls again,

“This isn’t peace.”

It hadn’t even felt like vengeance since Jiraiya died. Konan dreads waking up every morning. She’s so tired.

“This isn’t peace, Nagato.”

She whispers. His expression, unexpectedly, isn’t a study in betrayal. He’s not angry with her. He’s not even sad. 

There’s resignation on his face. It’s an echo of the exhaustion she knows lines her own. 

“I know.” 

He says, kneeling in the ashes next to Yahiko’s corpse,

“I know, but it’s close.”

The emptiness yawning inside of Konan might be close to be peace. It is silent and still. It doesn’t remind her of the days she spent by Yahiko’s side, though, where her and Nagato hid away from the world in the base Jiraiya set up for them. It doesn’t remind her of anything at all.

Nagato squeezes his eyes shut.

“It’s not the same, is it? It’s not the same for you.” 

He asks. He lowers his head until it brushes against Yahiko’s, whispering, 

“It doesn’t make you feel like he did.” 

Konan pulls the paper flower from her hair and twirls it between her fingers. She thinks of words: love isn’t enough, hate isn’t enough, pain isn’t enough. They’re true. Yahiko is dead and she hasn’t known peace since. 

“I feel empty.”

She admits, placing the flower carefully behind Nagato’s ear,

“And I think I’d like to stop.”

Nagato heaves a dry sob. She hasn’t seen him cry in almost a decade and it makes a shiver interrupt the stillness consuming her ( _a ship hanging between two opposing tides. Trapped, but only moments from being pulled to its destruction_ ).

“How?”

He asks her, clutching Yahiko’s corpse like a lifeline. Konan’s gaze drifts to the boy, the one with a Fox’s fangs ( _a bijuu’s hatred_ ) and a red ribbon wound around his neck like a challenge, stirring and smoking on the ground.

“I don’t know."

She tells him,

“But I think he might.”

__________

 

It goes like this: to gain something, you must give something away.

 

     It goes like this: Nagato has nothing left. Nothing except his life and his rinnegan eyes.  
     Konan has nothing left except for him and the flower in his hair.

 

           It goes like this: Nagato trades his life for those he took. Konan trades him for a second chance.

 

She promises Naruto Ame’s help in the conflict that is coming. All she asks in return is the chance to see him live free of hatred.

He looks guilty when she leaves, but she knows he has nothing to fear.

( _He’d pulled her flower from Nagato's ashes and tucked it into his jacket_ )

( _His careful hands didn’t speak a word of **hate**_ )

 

_____________

 

The tracking team returns to Konoha. Kakashi presses careful fingers to Naruto’s throat before he goes. Slides the ribbon from his skin and ties it to his own bared wrist, lightning crackling over it and singeing him. Kakashi eyes the resulting Lichtenberg figures with something approaching satisfaction.

He doesn’t explain himself. He simply leaves - Hound’s work was done and Naruto had never asked for Hound to stay ( _he’d asked for Kakashi, though. He’d asked before he’d left Konoha, he’d asked on the battlefield when Kakashi had fallen in his place, and desperately wanted to ask again. Grieving alone was something he could do, but Kami, he was tired of it. He was so afraid of losing them all again_ ). 

Alone again, Naruto brushes over the silent still lake inside of himself. Feels the chill of the water. Wonders if he imagined it bubbling. 

He reverse summons himself back to the mountain.

__________

 

Naruto sits by the waterfall and tries to meditate, quenching the heat building under his skin, blocking the howling of the wind. The toads gather around him and ask what he is. 

Naruto Uzumaki, he says. Future hokage, he says. Jinchuriki, student of Jiraiya, friend of a precious few. 

“But what are you?” 

They ask,

“What is your essence?”

He doesn’t know the words, so they tell him to look within.

There’s a sewer in his soul. There’s a lake and a sewer and a great golden cage. There are bars that spell out chaos in their tapering edges and black water that speaks of hatred. They were put there by men who are dead.

Naruto wades into the water and gazes upon a sea of orange. He has sat by it every night, spoken to it, called out to it, and has been ignored ( _if it had’ve answered his calls, it could’ve seen the man who crushed its voice die. It’s a morbid thought_ ).

He hates the kyuubi, but he can’t stop coming back to it. He’s supposed to take someone else’s name, but a question and a promise chains him to his own. 

How does one bind the essence of something? Keep it quiet and empty? Trapped in nothingness? 

Do you pin down its soul? Do you take away its name? Can it still exist without it?

Does Jiraiya still exist without it?   
  
If he didn’t, did it make Naruto right to hate Nagato? Even though he promised? Did it mean he  **should**  hate him?

Naruto sits in the water and gazes upwards into the darkness. If he concentrates, he can feel the threatening stillness of the lake up above. He can sense the weight of it.

It presses down on his chest, less than an inch to the right. He feels sad. Sad and cold without a darkness burning to keep him warm.  
  
**Ah.**

“I don’t hate Nagato, do I?”

His voice is unnaturally loud in the sewer. The lake steals away every other sound ( _he can’t even hear the kyuubi breathing or the steady pace of his own heart_ ). The sense of its weight presses down harder on his chest as he continues,

“You would know.”

He takes a shuddering breath, thinks of everything he knows of the seal, of demons and creatures built out of hatred,

“I don’t hate Nagato because if I did I’d be able to hear your voice in my head. The seal wouldn't stop you.”

If everything that made Jiraiya **Jiraiya** is truly gone, he thinks he should hate Nagato for stealing it. For trying to steal his own sense of self, too ( _making him a toad sage, **the** toad sage, before he could choose it for himself_).  

But he had been given a ribbon with his mother’s name on it and it was like she was still there. He’d carried Jiraiya’s letter and felt his heart beating between every blood-smeared line.

And he was here now. Standing before a creature silenced and caged in a way death seemed unable to achieve.

He didn’t hate Nagato. He wondered...he wondered if the kyuubi hated Jiraiya ( _hated Naruto, too_ ).

“Oi, kyuubi.” 

The words pour out of him like they’d always been meant to. Like they’d been practiced a thousand times before ( _and they had. **They had**_ ),

“I’m Naruto Uzumaki. What’s your name?”

The water lapping at his waist climbs higher in a sudden wave. It chills the scar on his chest to the bone, sapping whatever heat burnt through him when he’d spoken. 

The Fox has moved. It’s looking at him.

Gold collars glimmered on its neck, inscribed with a single symbol each. He thinks there are three of them. One calls his attention more strongly than the others, but it’s half-hidden in russet fur.

The Fox watches him and he watches it back. Its red eyes glimmer in the half-light provided by the bars of the cage that contains it.

Its massive maw opens, dozens on needle-sharp teeth on display, as it chuffs at him. Naruto startles at the noise - he hadn’t thought it could make any ( _hadn’t thought it wanted to even if it could_ ).

Swallowing, Naruto stands. Repeats himself ( _the water is warming, leeching off of his body, but hasn’t boiled yet_ ):

“What’s your name?” 

The Fox lowers its snout until it can look him directly in the eye. Its expression, while alien, is unmistakably mocking. 

“ **Kurama**.”

It rumbles.

The water boils. Naruto is thrown out.

__________

He’d never expected an answer. Now that he had one, he had no idea what to do with it. 

Beasts don’t have names, but Kurama does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Naruto, projecting:** Maybe your partner abandoning and hurting you is ok as long as they come back! That's why you still love them after! It's a happy ending if you want it to be!  
>  **Jiriaiya, also projecting:** Idk, sounds like the guy who keeps leaving sucks real bad...but also I desperately need to have hope in something, so maybe you're right!  
>  **Kushina, traumatized:** Yeah, gotta look on the bright side, guys! You have to love the world even when it's stabbed you in the back like ten times! Because it's the opposite of hate! And hate lets the demons out, ha..haha......ha
> 
>  **Jiraiya:** Idk man, Shinobi are low-key freaks about vulnerability. I write porn about it and it sells incredibly well  
>  **Naruto:** Sounds fake. I've been vulnerable plenty of times and no one has been a freak about it!  
>  **Sasuke:** *feels up Naruto's literal heart in a grand gesture representing his obsession with vulnerability and strength dynamics*  
>  **Kakashi:** *is a huge freak about a red ribbon that is dainty and sits across Naruto's throat, an obvious weakness that has been turned into a weapon that could, ultimately, kill him*  
>  **Nagato:** *has a large enough freak out about personal vulnerability that he literally wields the bodies of other people to deliver his sermon/lessons about forcing people to feel vulnerable, hiding his own body from sight despite having the rinnegan and uhhhhh not really needing to use those corpses like that bro*  
>  **Naruto:** You...uh...might have a point, sensei
> 
> Idle thoughts on this chapter: toads/frogs are representative of luck in Japanese folklore (esp frogs with coins in their mouth...like Naruto's little wallet). I wonder if that's why the author chose to give Naruto toad summons? Or maybe he just did it to fit into the sannin storyline of 'The Tale of the Gallant Jiraiya'. Naruto really is a lucky guy, though he's constantly running away from that luck into situations that are bad (that luck gets him out of later). 
> 
> Other idle thoughts: The Will of Fire is a distinct thing in Konoha, where a lot of people seem to have a fire affinity. Extending that thought to other affinities, I thought it'd be fun if each division of nature represented something/were ACTUALLY something. There have been some implications of it prior to this and more later, though you'll be figuring it out along with Naruto...so it might take awhile. Some divisions flow into each other better than others, which is going to be important.
> 
> Bonus:  
>  **Naruto:** I hate you, kyuubi!  
>  **Kurama, a fox that gains power through hatred who is still pretty powerless:** Sure you do, kiddo. Sure you do...


	4. Descent Into Maelstrom (Part 4)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naruto's priorities will never be on the same page as everyone else's. Except, maybe, Kurama's.

Kurama doesn’t answer when Naruto calls, but he does speak to him the next time he leaves the mountain ( _falling inside of himself_ ).

“You aren’t made of mud.” 

Kurama growls, massive red eyes pinning Naruto in place,

“You aren’t anything as paltry as that.”

The wind whistles through the sewer and slices through the silence. Above his head, Naruto can feel the lake ripple.

“Uzumaki aren’t built like **mud**. You’re all natural disasters in the making. So stop wasting your time here - sages aren’t the only ones to sense chakra.”

There’s contempt in Kurama’s tone if not on his furry face. Naruto squints at him and tries to figure out why he’s chosen now to speak after so long ( _speaking to Naruto is clearly the last thing he wants to do_ ). 

“Do you not want to share space with a toad spirit inside of me? Or do you just not want mud in your fur?”

He finally asks, scarcely able to believe what he’s saying himself. The Fox stares at him, then snarls loudly ( _the lake ripples again. It makes his heart leap erratically_ ).

The water boils. He’s thrown out.

_______  
 

Thinking about the way water curled around his mother’s name, gone heavy and ozonous, singing with lightning, gives Naruto an idea. He finds other symbols, ones that mean ‘nature’ in all its divided forms, ones that mean chakra, and creates a maze for them. Chakra marks the outside, curling and looping lazily into its most central forms: yin and yang. Yin reaches deep into earth and fans out into water, while yang bursts into flames and tapers off into wind. They meet in lightning and, spidering away from that, in soul.  
  
It's a circuit. One that connects to him and 'soul' like a lightbulb.

It’s not perfect, but the paper hums for every chakra signature within a few kilometers. It even lets him feel hints of the elements in each ( _just like in his first affinity test_ ).

Naruto paints it on his skin and washes it off when he wants to sleep ( _energy of the world around him ebbing and flowing, keeping him awake and too-aware as long as the seal was active_ ). 

The shape of it, the path he could just barely make out ( _marked in fractals_ ), reminds him of the scrolls he pulled from Uzushio. It reminds him of his name.

Uzumaki weren’t made of mud, eh? Were they sensors? Could he have been if his mother had survived?

Naruto taps the lightning rune and feels a crackle of familiarity. He wonders if he could, if he tried, sense the soul of whoever’s nearby. 

A chill lingers in his chest. He doesn’t test his luck ( _he wasn’t a toad, after all. Luck never seemed to stick to him quite right_ ).

________

Naruto goes home - mission complete. He doesn’t expect to stay. He doesn’t even really want to, knowing that Sasuke is somewhere far away ( _knowing that one day he could end up like Jiraiya did, not sure if he would try and avoid it or not_ ).

It’s good, though. It’s good to be safe enough to let the sadness roll over him. It’s good to let Tsunade in, to shut the rest of the world out, and to tell her everything Jiraiya might’ve wanted her to know.

It’s good to know Tsunade didn’t quite love the old man back. It’s good to know she loved better men before him. Men who knew how to give her more than a connection strung out between continents and unhappy endings.

It’s less sad than thinking about what could have been.

They talk about Uzumakis and Uzushio. A history shared, even if it’s only in the most tenuous fashion. She tells him his mother’s hair was a red thread of fate between her and his father. She laughs and says Jiraiya should’ve known more about romance, watching that come together.

They don’t talk about the ribbon Kakashi keeps with his bells ( _they don’t talk about the unhappy endings he keeps in a book close to his heart_ ). They don’t talk about Team Seven at all or the way history repeats itself.

When the sun gets low and the mood runs somber, Tsunade places her hokage’s cloak on the table between them. She pulls out a pile of official papers and teaches him to read them through as she talks to him. As she tells him about how poorly their investigation into Akatsuki has gone. Tells him about one of Iwa’s lost Jinchuriki, drained of his bijuu. Tells him how Asuma died, trapped in a curse from Akatsuki unknowns his team was investigating, and how Konohamaru stalks the halls of hokage tower like a ghost.

Hidan, Asuma’s killer, is buried alive in the Nara’s cursed forest. Buried alive because he’s proven to be immortal. The other one escaped.

Naruto had come home with no expectation to stay, but now he wishes he had more time. He doesn’t want any of his friends to fall into revenge. Doesn’t want any of them getting twisted ideas of peace ( _he only promised Konan to live his own life without hate, but he’s not sure how he’ll manage if everyone he loves chooses something different_ ).

But Akatsuki is looking for him here. They’re hunting other Jinchuriki, too, and proving to be stronger than anyone suspected. 

He can’t stay.

At least, he tells Tsunade as she tucks him under her cloak, he can give Gaara some answers about who he is – who they are ( _the monsters inside them making their mark_ ). At least he can keep his fellow Jinchuriki above water.

He just hopes it’s enough. 

_______

  
Down in the sewer, the water is warm. Kurama watches him with one eye open. They don’t speak, even though they can.

Naruto searches through every hint of gold in the gloom. He doesn’t see ‘Kurama’ written on a single thing. He wonders if his own name is somewhere in here, keeping Kurama trapped.

Quietly, warm water lapping at his ankles, Naruto resolves to find all the pieces of Kurama’s name in this prison. He’s already found chaos in its jagged edges. He’s found the wind, screaming at him from atop the toads' mountain and rippling the surface the lake overhead. Fire, too, roaring through him while Pain destroyed people he loved ( _the will of fire was love of others, sacrifice for others, and fire was energy. His theories about love seem to apply to it – to the flames. He’s not sure, though, when Kurama holds so much hate_ ). 

Nature, though he’s not sure exactly how, is somewhere in here, too. He’s not sure of the division between yin and yang. 

And he’s not sure what the core of Kurama’s very being is. Chakra, energy, but...more. 

He could ask, he thinks. But Kurama is bored of him, and so the water boils before he’s thrown out. 

_______

   
It goes like this: Kakashi is nowhere to be seen, though Naruto’s sensor seal crackles often with familiar energy. He holds it aloft once, sizzling with lightning, and manages to hear Kakashi’s oddly graceless escape.

It takes him awhile to come back, after that. He waits for Naruto’s last day in Konoha to return, but doesn’t say goodbye. The only sign he’d ever been there was a pop of electricity and a single silver bell in a scarlet pouch.

It goes like this: Sakura leaves him rice balls in his apartment with the key he never took away from her. There’s a note with them. The only thing it says is:

_“For the journey.”_

It’s nice. Knowing that she expects him to come back, knowing that this time she doesn’t feel the need to extract another promise from him. It feels a bit like trust, the kind they used to have, and he packs the food carefully away.

It goes like this: he collects Konohamaru from hokage tower and sits with him by Asuma’s grave the morning he’s meant to leave. He makes the wind play with the kid’s ( _not so much a kid anymore. A proper genin, now_ ) hair and the petals of the flowers he brought. 

It’s not much comfort, but it counts for something. Things that count seem to be in short supply.

Afterwards, Konohamaru drags him by the hand through the trees. Pulls him over the fence that marks the forbidden Nara forest, a dangerous place for non-clan members, because he trusts him ( _trusts Naruto to be stronger than ever now, even more capable than the jounin lost here after pissing off some nature spirit, even more bent on protecting people he loves_ ).

Naruto follows the tugs and pulls of nature with paper and seals. He avoids the whispers of youkai and deadly things with a hand to his chest, less than an inch to the right.

A stake in the ground marks Hidan’s final resting place. Konohamaru spits on it before breaking down in tears.   
  
( _He scratches at the dirt between sobs, like he could dig up an immortal and kill them himself_ )

Shikaku Nara guides Konohamaru out, struggling to keep a disaffected expression as Naruto asks if he can stay awhile. Shikaku leaves him there, sitting in a forest he shouldn’t be able to navigate, and decides to send his son to get him ( _muttering about troublesome people while he eyes Shikamaru scrambling around his room suspiciously_ ). 

It goes like this: Shikamaru watches with avid interest ( _smoke curling in a disarmingly lazy fashion around his head, obscuring the dark glimmer of his eyes_ ) as Naruto carves something into Hidan’s stake. The symbols bend over every inch of wood, spilling off to curl onto the surrounding scratched dirt. There’s the faintest glow of blue, the scent of ozone and salt, and the ground seems to...bubble.

It heaves upwards and Shikamaru feels a chill under his bare feet. If he listens closely, there’s a rush of water over stone. 

Naruto’s expression is strange. Blank except for the catch of too-sharp teeth on a split lower lip ( _little fangs that looked wilder than before flashing in the afternoon sunlight_ ).

Blood drips on the grass and the rush of water disappears, though the coolness of the soil remains.

“Did you summon a lake in that grave or something?”

Shikamaru asks ( _instead of asking anything else on his mind. ‘What are you doing here? When are you leaving? Will you ask me again?’_ ). Naruto stirs, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, and smiles with reddened teeth ( _less brittle than the first time he’d returned_ ). 

“Something like that.” 

He says, licking his split lip. He glances away ( _seems to contemplate something for a second in the lines of the gravesite_ ) before adding,

“Even if anyone digs him up, they’ll have a hard time pulling him out of that.”

Shikamaru sidles closer. The smoke from his cigarette catches Naruto’s eye before his many earrings do ( _he slows his pace to let Naruto take them all in. He slows even further to let his gaze trace over the jounin flak jacket he’d pulled on when his father told him who was here. The annoyance in Naruto’s gaze, the envy and admiration, made the extra two minutes of searching his room worth it_ ). 

“Pulling him out of what?” 

Shikamaru asks ( _shadows sneaking ahead of him to squeeze at Naruto’s ankles, winding up his legs to press against the arteries in his thighs. He can feel the sensation in his own hands: warm, solid, alive. His anchor is here – **actually here** , again_). When Naruto opens his mouth to answer, shadows cradle his jaw, following the bend of the trees, and sweep across his cheeks. They shush him gently.

“There was water making some noise, but it stopped all of a sudden. It’s still there, though - you made something like a pocket for it, only as big as that seal.”

Shikamaru muses. He presses his hand into the dirt and pushes some chakra through. His reserves are meager, but the spirits in the Nara forest were always willing to provide a little more yin to him ( _the shadows here stretching unnaturally, the trees bending like Shikamaru's beckoning fingers_ ).

The space below the earth pulls at what he puts in at an alarming rate. It makes his heart stutter in his chest until Naruto steadies him with worried hands ( _his shadows having slipped away with his energy_ ).

“A vacuum.” 

Shikamaru mutters, turning his face towards Naruto and blinking when their noses brush. The newly minted funjutsu master scratches the back of his neck in an obvious tell - he doesn’t know what Shikamaru means. 

“You made a hole with no air and half-filled with water. Lined in...stone? No sound gets out or in through the gap. Anyone who opens it up or tries to feel around in it will get a nasty surprise – vacuums can be explosive.”

Shikamaru clarifies. He lifts a hand to keep Naruto’s chin up as he says,

“Simple, but clever.”

Naruto’s face colours and he scratches at his neck again ( _the bell tied to his wrist jingling. Shikamaru almost remembers a story about Team Seven and bells, but then Naruto smiles at him_ ). His grin is wobbly, but the same determination as ever shines through. 

“I’ve always been clever!” 

He announces. It’s a bit too loud considering their proximity, though Shikamaru doesn’t move away. Instead he grins back, full of mischief and edged with something knowing, and hums in agreement.

It goes like this: they leave the forest in silence. A question hangs between them that neither knows how to ask first. Naruto has already been refused once ( _a single bell severed from its twin, a team separated_ ) and he’s not sure if he wants to experience it again through Shikamaru’s blunt words. 

He’s not a coward, though, so when they reach the gates he makes a request. 

“Come with me.”

It goes like this: this time, when Naruto leaves home, he doesn’t do it alone. He’s got team Ino-Shika-Cho on his side. 

///////

  
Shikamaru is the first of his old team to pass their jounin exams. The victory is expected, despite some of the tricks Asuma and Kurenai pull from their sleeves ( _a shockingly stable team despite Asuma’s general surliness and tight-lips about the other jounin_ ). 

Shikamaru expected to feel more about it. He has a new earring ( _curtesy of Kurenai this time. She’s proud of the design of a Shogi piece, a king, she’s gotten worked into the metal. Shikamaru expects Asuma had something to do with it. If only he’d known how much it would come to mean-_ ) and a new jacket. A new rank. 

He’s already bored with it.

Choji has taken him out for steak between the two of them. As always, he has a good sense for when Shikamaru has had too much company for the day ( _Choji’s doesn’t count. It flows over him like cool water on a hot day_ ).

As always, Choji lets him eat in silence before cutting straight to the heart of the issue.

“The next time he comes back,”

Choji says, not bothering to clarify who ( _because both of them knew_ ), 

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

They’re finished their meal before Shikamaru finally feels like he can answer ( _he’s played a good chunin for years with few exceptions, unwilling to fail his team or his village ever again. Now, though? He was going to disappear to the forest for a day and ignore anyone who tried to find him_ ).

“Chunin obey, jounin make their own way.”

He shrugs at Choji’s raised brows,

“I was always going to go.” 

Choji hums and pours a finger of sake that Shikamaru returns his raised brow at. Neither of them can handle their alcohol. 

“Figured you’d need help being honest.” 

Choji replies, pointedly sliding the cup towards him. He chortles when Shikamaru groans. He full-on belly laughs when Shikamaru knocks it back. 

They talk about idle things for an hour until Shikamaru feels fuzzy and warm ( _like he’s being laying in the shadow of a ravine under the hot sun, or like he's standing in the forest in dappled sunlight with the cool grass under his feet_ ).

“He’s gonna be hokage someday. No one’s gonna make him take the steps right – he’s unconventional and it’s not like the old lady wants the hat.” 

Shikamaru sighs, burying his hot face in his arms,

“‘M not gonna leave him to prove myself as a jounin the next time he’s back all...stronger than anyone else. I’m not letting anyone else take that spot.” 

He flaps a hand at Choji when he chuckles. 

“Don’t laugh.”

Shikamaru groans,

“I’m going to be his advisor, not some old asshole like Danzo. I have to be there if I want it. 

Choji drags Shikamaru to his feet ( _ignoring his swaying)._  

“You have,” 

Choji starts, voice fond ( _if a bit exasperated_ ),

“No idea what you’re talking about, do you?”

As he drops Shikamaru back off in his bed at the Nara estate, Choji knocks his knuckles against his best friend’s forehead. 

“It’s alright if you’re a moron.”

Choji tells him,

“As long as you don’t try and stop us from going with you.”

“Don’t need Ino’s help...she’ll yell at me.” 

Shikamaru mutters under his breath. As his door closes, he just barely catches Choji’s quiet, 

“Yes, you do.”

  
///////

When Naruto sees Gaara next, his friend is no longer a Jinchuriki. and Naruto’s answers are irrelevant to him. The one-trailed bijuu ( _Shukaku, that’s what Gaara tells him while emancipated in his bed, the beast he called ‘mother’ was Shukaku_ ) won’t ever be placed back inside of him. 

It had been stuffed inside a statue. Kurama, when Naruto tells him, shakes and rampages until the hate-filled freezing water nearly drowns him. Shukaku is definitely not coming back. 

Gaara only survived because one of his people, the one who sealed Shukaku inside him to start with, chose to trade her life for his. Naruto shudders as Gaara clings to his hand ( _the parallels between them overwhelming at times. Sometimes, Naruto is convinced that if he dies Gaara will, too. He’s afraid of that_ ).

“When they were draining me,”

Gaara wheezes, smiling with cracked lips,

“I saw you. I saw us as children - alone and unloved.”

He coughs and Shikamaru pours water into Naruto’s hands. He cups them so Gaara can sip far less than he could from the canteen.

“When Chiyo brought me back,”

Gaara continues, 

“I saw you again. As my other half.”

Choking down tears, Naruto presses his forehead to Gaara’s. He feels the grooves of ‘ai’ against his skin and desperately wishes he could’ve shared his answers with Gaara sooner, both to have someone else who understood and to ease Gaara’s greatest sorrow _(‘ai’ - love for himself. Love for only himself. A mother who sacrificed and tried to save him all at once, replaced by a monster in his head_ ). 

“I’m sorry.”

Naruto tells him. Gaara exhales quietly, practically a snort from him, and taps his cheek. 

“There’s still a fragment of Shukaku in me, I’m sure.”

He says, 

“I still saw myself standing by your side. A piece of Shukaku stayed with me, so we’re still mirrors. We’re still the same.” 

_______

   
When Gaara can walk again, he proves himself right ( _despite Shikamaru’s mutterings about fanciful visions and dreams_ ). His control over sand is untouched. His chakra reserves have barely dipped. Ino even confirms that his mindscape still contains the prison that held Shukaku. 

Naruto’s answers ( _and his questions, because Gaara knew Shukaku’s name long before Naruto knew Kurama’s_ ) might not be able to help Gaara as much as they once could, but it’s clear the Kazekage ( _and when had that happened? He was almost too eager to ask - it was clear the abusive old man was out of the picture_ ) gets more from him than simple words.

______

 

“Ai,”

Naruto says, tracing the kanji on Gaara’s face as they sit atop a sand spire, 

“Love. I think it’s like energy.”

They’re watching the moonrise. The wind is howling around them and Gaara can wind it around Naruto’s seal papers just like he can. It’s peaceful even if they can barely hear each other speak. 

“It doesn’t mean anything by itself.” 

Naruto tells Gaara ( _hoping these words are right. Hoping that even if his presence is all Gaara asks for, he can give him more_ ), 

“But when you give it to a belief, it makes it stronger. Love makes you stronger, yeah?”

Gaara’s fingers trace the same path Naruto’s had. The kanji is bright and starkly pink in the moonlight against his pale face. 

Gaara hums. 

“I’m stronger as their Kage than I ever was before.” 

He says, 

“And I’m stronger after meeting you.”

Sand trickles down his arms and marks the shape of one of Naruto’s wind seals against the spire. Curious, Naruto pushes some chakra into it and is nearly blown off by the resulting sandstorm. Gaara pulls it to a standstill, tugging hard against Naruto’s chakra, and laughs quietly into the wind when they’re perfectly matched.

“I suppose I love this.” 

Gaara admits ( _the tiniest of smiles curling across his lips. It’s so small Naruto thinks he’s imagining it_ ).

“I don’t want to lose it.”

Gaara says, clearing the sand obscuring their view of the moon,

“So I’m going to use that love to be stronger. Suna will fight with you, Naruto, no matter what happens.”

Somehow, without meaning to, Naruto has the pledge of two hidden villages. For what, he doesn’t know. 

( _He doesn’t want to_ ) 

______

   
The sewer is cold and water drips from the ceiling. Naruto shivers as he wades through the inky darkness. 

“Shukaku is like you.”

He calls out into the shadows. A mass of orange, far away from the bars, shifts as Kurama snorts. 

“Obviously.” 

He growls, 

“Why else would he have been sealed in some brat?”

They both know that isn’t what Naruto meant - he wasn’t talking about tailed beasts. He was talking about...this.

Being a living natural thing. Having a name.

“Is he dead?" 

Naruto ventures ( _could things like Kurama die? Or were they just...erased?_ ). He knows he’s on unstable ground. Kurama is as likely to throw him out as he is to indulge him. 

The mass of orange shifts again. Kurama’s head swings around, red eyes blazing ( _golden collars gleaming in the half-light_ ). 

“No.” 

Kurama hisses,

“But he might as well be.”

The water boils. Naruto is thrown out.

_______

  
“If the others are found...”

Naruto asks later that night, kneeling in chilly waves as Kurama paces, 

“Will the same thing happen to them?” 

The Fox makes a horrible sound. Naruto can’t even begin to parse what it means before Kurama’s jaws are snapping in his face.  

“The humans or my siblings, brat?” 

Kurama asks. The atmosphere around him oozes with insidious intent that makes each breath heavy and painful. Naruto glares at him ( _the other beasts, a name that still didn't fit, were like Kurama. Not dead, but might as well be. He can imagine what that means_ ).

“Both.”

He replies.

The water boils. He’s thrown out. 

________

   
In between everything else, Naruto picks over scrolls and histories from the depths of Konoha's libraries ( _copied and handed over by Tsunade herself long before he came home_ ). He’s always reading ( _Shikamaru hovering just over his shoulder, trying to soak in all the same information_ ) and painting half-finished shapes on paper.  

He’s looking for the pieces that make Kurama  **Kurama**. Even if he gets caught, even if he goes down...

He’d like to make sure they can’t take Kurama, too.   
  
( _Not dead, but might as well be_ ) 

_______

Killer B is like no one Naruto has ever met. Him and the monster inside have formed a relationship that Naruto has only begun to comprehend. B knows the Gyuubi almost better than he knows himself.  
  
( _He says it’s an honour to be chosen for this. To be both prisoner and jailer_ )

Which, of course, makes B’s extraction, in the middle of the Land of Waves ( _because he’d headed out to find Yugito, Kumo's other Jinchuriki, like A explicitly told him not to_ ), more horrific than anything Naruto could imagine. He stops it - he stops it, he does, he  **stops**  it, but it makes his chest  **burn**  dark and hot with Kurama trying to boil the lake right out of him. 

He’s just barely on time ( _minutes, a lifetime_ ) because he’s been keeping tabs on B’s chakra since he met him. It almost isn’t enough. He’s not strong enough to stop an extraction alone, and Shikamaru’s team was busy playing distraction. 

He only stops it because this time when he calls, Kurama **answers**. Crawls halfway out of Naruto’s skin, folds himself into too-sharp teeth and almost-slitted pupils Naruto has finally gotten used to, and screams. 

The wind howls and a wildfire blazes while chakra coats his skin. Naruto feels like a passenger in his own body, though this time he doesn’t black out, and this time he can still guide their shared hands ( _blood tipping the claws, seals scrawled into the air at a fever-pitch as a sword that drinks chakra nearly cleaves them in two_ ). 

He has to grip the Gyuubi’s essence with his bare hands and shove it back into the seal circling B’s belly. It sends him to whatever place the two of them share, some distant mountain in the clouds where there are no cages, and the Gyuubi nearly kills him ( _electricity crackling from the clouds_ ). Nearly rends him limb from limb as just another invader. 

Kurama knocks him to the side. Gives Naruto his name – Gyūki - and permission to use it.   
  
( _It works. It works and Kurama stands just behind him as his hands tentatively brush under Gyūki's watering eyes. It works and he feels fox fur curl around his ankles_ )

Somehow, Naruto feels like he’s made two friends in B. Somehow, Kumo becomes another ally for whatever he needs. 

Somehow, he’s increasingly sure he’s going to need them ( _because Akatsuki is moving faster and faster, and he’s not sure he can beat them to their next destination_ ). 

________

They don’t catch the Akatsuki before they hit the next Jinchuriki in Kumo. Yugito, stronger than B and twice as vicious, is long dead by the time Konoha’s other Akatsuki suppression team arrives on scene ( _Naruto is half the continent away, sitting in a steaming sewer and gritting his teeth against Kurama’s screams_ ).  

Kakashi kicks at the corpses of Yugito’s killers and wonders how far Akatsuki already reaches. He sends one of his dogs back to Konoha with a missive. 

This wasn’t a mission anymore. It was a war.

________

After that, time seems to pick up speed. Like Jiraya, Naruto never seems to have enough of it, never seems to get it right, though Shikamaru constantly insists he’s lucky ( _Naruto laughs and tells him that’s just because his summons are toads. Team Shika-Ino-Cho makes a strange face at that_ ). They miss Akatsuki’s sightings by a hair and, while it keeps them alive, Naruto knows it means they’ll go after someone else. 

He doesn’t see Sasuke. Neither does Kakashi’s team. 

Instead, they hear rumors of Kiri’s bloodthirsty Kage. Rumors that imply he’s bound in a genjutsu - one strong enough to control even a bijuu. If Akatsuki had gone for the one and two tails first, had gotten the four tails early in a targeted attack, and had aimed for the eight tails in B and the nine tails in Naruto entirely by chance, chances were high they’d hit Kiri’s three tails soon. Their intentional targets all started low.

Though skipping over three for four...if Akatsuki already had Kiri in their pocket, that made no sense. They could trying to divert suspicion, but...

The Mizukage might already be dead. Either way, they’d have to go to Kiri ( _where secrets went to die, damn it)_  to find out. 

________  
 

Entering Kiri feels like sliding through molasses ( _cold and sticky fingers of mist clinging to his clothes_ ). It has Kurama’s hackles up when Naruto checks on him, though Shikamaru’s team doesn’t seem to think anything of it. Naruto has never been any good at dealing with genjutsu. Ino is their expert, and, if she thinks nothing is wrong, then nothing is wrong. 

Of course, this means something is wrong. 

A man in an orange mask strikes so fast they don’t even have time to react. He calls himself Tobi ( _maniacally and in third person, like it doesn’t belong to him, like having a name was a funny joke_ ) as he drags Naruto off the ground by his throat. 

His tone is chipper, confused even, but the genjutsu he casts is like a knife to the brain ( _painless and terrifying_ ). Even with Kurama writhing, the lake stirring up with a storm, and Naruto calling on him for help, the illusion falls over them both. 

It’s suffocating.  

It shuffled through his memories and bent them to Tobi’s will. Made him see patterns that had never existed - insisted on his loneliness from the day he was born ( _though it wavers over Iruka’s helping hand, because otherwise he would’ve died as a child fending for himself, and that couldn’t be explained away with delicate bending, could it?_ ). It warped reality around him with shocking ease until his entire life centred around a single thought:

Who dies? Him or them? It has to be one.   
  
( _They all wanted him to die. Had from the start. But he wasn't theirs to kill_ )

When he wavered, confused ( _Iruka’s helping hand is holding a knife, but what for? Is he handing it over or using it as a threat?_ ), the thoughts grow louder. Become targeted.

He looks at Shikamaru and knows that if he lives, Naruto will have to die. Everything else fades into the background ( _Iruka’s helping hand chops vegetables, chops Naruto's fingers, but those would heal, wouldn’t they? It was ok, wasn't it? Iruka would never take away anything Naruto couldn't get back)._  
  
( _He wasn't his to kill_ )

“Kill him.”

Tobi whispers,

“And I’ll let you go free for awhile longer, nine tails.” 

His laugh is insidious. 

Who dies? Him or Shikamaru? He has to pick.   
  
( _Naruto wasn't Shikamaru's to kill_ )

There’s a darkness burning in his chest ( _less than one inch to the right_ ). It boils and storms before slotting in perfectly next to his own thoughts.   
  
( _One of them had to die for the other to live_ )

Naruto lifts a kunai. The bell tied to his wrist chimes.

He cuts his own throat. 

________

Afterwards, Naruto hears from Shikamaru that Tobi had been struck dumb. He'd stood there for a moment completely frozen. No one had managed to kill him, though, because they hadn't been able to move either.  
  
Then, like nothing had happened, Tobi had left ( _laughing breezily about ‘the other one’_ ).

Afterwards, Naruto realizes that Kurama could’ve stopped him from killing himself ( _he’d felt hatred, had let his grip on himself slip entirely),_ but didn’t. He could’ve chosen his life ( _and Naruto’s by proxy_ ), but didn’t.

Kurama had chosen death over being a puppet and had chosen that  **with**  him. They’d been in perfect agreement. 

He’ll only realize these things afterwards, though, because all he sees now is a woman with red hair in a sea of blue. 

/////////

_“Me and the Fox...all we ever shared was misfortune.”_

_“I knew my bad luck would catch up to you someday, so I thought I should leave a piece of me here. Tucked away in the seal - an impression to keep the old grump from breaking through it more than once.”_

_“I never thought that it’d put itself back away without a fight. As long as I’ve known it, it wanted to be free of me, and I wanted to be free of it.”_

_“But it tried to save your life, kiddo. It would’ve died with you if you actually, y’know, died, so maybe it doesn’t count. But it didn’t even think of breaking the seal while you were weak - just put everything it had towards that nasty cut once the shock freed it of that illusion! That’s crazy!”_

_“I get the feeling a lot of people do that - try to save your life with their own. I did that after knowing you for just an hour! Of course, I would’ve done it even before you were born because I love you, but the point stands. Lots of people probably love you, too. You’re meant for that - Uzumaki to the bone.”_

_“I love you so much. I’m so sorry I’m not here with you.”_

_“I’m so sorry I died.”_

_“But I’m not sorry that I could save your life like this. The kyuubi in you in mostly yang, cause me and your dad separated its yin chakra. I don’t know where all of it went, but I kept some riiiiiight here.”_   
  
_“It should be enough to put you and it back together until the Fox can do the rest.”_   
  
_“Don’t go dying like this again, y’hear? I know it’s the Uzumaki way to go, in a storm of your own making, but you’re the last of us. Someone here has to live. Someone has to carry on our will.”_

 _“We’re the sea, darling. Where the tide flows into the narrows, where it pulls two ways at once, we’re the sea. **The maelstrom**.”_  
  
_“Do you understand?”_

_“Destroy those bastards before they do something stupid with the bijuu. I’m sure the Fox will approve.”_

/////////

  
The water in the sewer scalds Naruto’s skin and he cries out. It’s higher than ever and steam obscures even the meager light of the cage.

“Kurama.” 

Naruto calls, desperately trying to move through the water without any sense of direction,

“Kurama! Kurama, are you alright!?”

He sucks in a deep breath and, hoping jutsus still work in this place, blows out what should have been a massive gale. The steam barely clears, but it’s enough. 

The Fox has its back to him. It’s a position Kurama hasn’t taken since they defended Gyūki together, and it runs Naruto through with guilt ( _even as relief spears him just as hard, because Kurama is still here, still breathing_ ). 

“I’m sorry!” 

Bursts out of him,

“I’m sorry I-“ 

His hands flutter at his throat for a moment before falling back to hover awkwardly above too-hot water,

“I’m sorry I did that without considering your feelings. If I die, you die. I should’ve thought of that. I should’ve - I should’ve asked you or something." 

He curls his fingers around the bars of the cage, closer than he’s ever been before ( _the heat here is cloying and near-unbearable_ ),

“I didn’t mean to pick Shikamaru over you. It’s just - he’s - he’s Shikamaru, y’know? And even though it seemed like he was never my friend, I couldn’t...”

The Fox stays stubbornly where it is. Naruto’s first reaction to the silent treatment is anxiety - it feels like a massive setback. It feels like Kurama is so angry he’s shutting Naruto out. 

The water here is higher than ever. Hotter than ever. But he hasn’t been thrown out.

Kurama is prone to temper tantrums since they’ve been speaking. He rarely misses an opportunity to be derisive or judgmental, lashing out whenever Naruto admits to some weakness. The water rose and fell with his emotions ( _ran cold when he was struggling to escape, to lash out, to harm Naruto or the seal. It was warm, sometimes. But it ran hot when...when did it run hot? Not boiling – no, that was different. When did the lake above them bubble?_ ).  

Naruto thinks about heat. He thinks about fire. About his first impression of the Fox. 

A darkness burning. Malice, but also... 

“You wanted to live.” 

He says, then frowns. If that was all, Kurama would be raging at him. Clawing his way free, consequences be damned, puppeting Naruto’s body because-

Because he’d been using Kurama’s chakra with Kurama’s permission. He’d given him a way out, even if it was only measured in seconds of control.

Control that could’ve moved his hands. Could’ve-

“You didn’t want the man in the mask to be the one to kill you.”

Naruto realizes, wincing as the water grows painfully hotter, 

“You didn’t want him to control you. You were scared of that - you’d rather die.”

Kurama’s tails lash against the bars and knock Naruto backwards into the sludge. It tastes just as foul as it looks, forcing him to sputter and spit.

“This prison is an indignity.” 

Kurama rumbles, furious snout right at the bars when Naruto finally blinks all the dark liquid from his eyes, 

“However, it does not pretend to be anything but a prison. I will escape this some day, mortal, with my will intact.

Teeth taller than Naruto gleam pearly white in the gloom. Kurama snarls, 

“That man would take that from me. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.”

The tails smash against the bars again. Though Naruto is further away from them now, the resulting wave still bowls him over. When he surfaces, Kurama has given him his back again. 

Naruto squints at it.

“When I didn’t die...”

He slowly says,

“You healed me.”

The kyuubi chuffs. Mutters,

“Is it so hard to believe I have no death-wish, brat? The problem was gone. Living was the better option.” 

Picking his way closer again, Naruto tries to crane his neck to get a look at Kurama’s face. His expressions are hard to read, however Naruto is getting better at it.

He barely sees the glimmer of one red eye before Kurama shifts further away.

“You left me with a scar. Again.” 

Naruto pointed out, refusing to stop needling the monster he was trying to befriend ( _because he was onto something. His mother had said - no, no, don’t think about that yet. Leave it alone until you’re safe_ ), 

“You did it on purpose. You did it last time-“ 

He pauses. Reconsiders. Heat, fire, a darkness burning less than one inch to the right.

Malice. A want to live. A want for freedom ( _to be called by name and only by name. To not be used in someone else’s plans_ ).

Moments in which they were in total agreement, because they wanted to  **choose** their ending for themselves. And the ending they chose this time-

( _Fire, love, sacrifice for others_ ) 

“You love the other bijuu.”

Naruto realizes, stunned because he’d never attributed the word to Kurama before, but now it’s all he can think of ( _his screams, the way he’d given Naruto Gyūki’s name, the call he finally answered_ ). 

“You wanted me to remember this.” 

Naruto presses, though the water is beginning to hit the point where the skin it touches has gone numb with heat,

“You scarred me so I’d be better next time, you absolute bastard! You saved me so I could save them, not you, you misbegotten bag of fleas!”

He grins, realizing he’s seconds from being ejected from this place, and yells,

“You do believe in me!”

The water boils. It feels different than usual, but he’s still thrown out.

_________  
 

The buzzing in Shikamaru’s head is unbareable. It coats all his thoughts until they come cottony and sluggish. It’s driving him insane.

He needs to think.

There’s always been safety in thought for him _(peace in logic when interacting with people has drained him dry, when he’d hit his limit for the day)._ He craves that safety. He’s desperate for it. 

Shikanaru needs to think and he needs a smoke, but he can’t even gather enough brainpower to lift his hand. He is currently crushing Naruto’s fingers, which is ok because he’s unconscious and can’t feel it. Can’t make fun of Shikamaru for it.

Kami, Naruto was unconscious. Because he had tried to - 

No, no, he’d **succeeded** in _(a red line opening wide, perfectly straight, no hesitation)-_  

Shikamaru was going to vomit, but he couldn’t vomit on Naruto and he couldn’t move -

Choji’s voice is an anchor in a stormy sea. Shikamaru draws short sharp breaths as he listens to it closely. Squeezes his eyes shut against the sight of a thick white scar crossing Naruto’s throat.

_(It mocks him. It will never let him forget that, if he were too much of a coward to sacrifice himself without hesitation, Naruto would act first)_

_(He’d do it like it was easy)_

_(Like there was never any other choice)_  

Choji’s arms are tucked under his. Ino is gripping his shoulders shakily. They’re pulling him away and Shikamaru can’t think. He can’t think, he can’t move, he didn’t move even though he’d heard Tobi’s words _(he had assumed he was going to die, had prepared to fight, and then...and then-)._

Shikamaru lets go, too numb to hold on any longer. Naruto’s hand falls, limp, and the single bell on his wrist chimes ominously in the wind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Naruto:** *accurately points out Kurama doesn't like sharing*  
>  **Kurama, immediately:** I'm so??? Insulted and angry??? You haven't earned the right to mock me yet????  
>  **Kurama, later:** You're not insulting me? You're just sitting in there in the nice warm water doing nothing? What bullshit is this? Blocked.
> 
>  **Tobi:** In a situation where one person has to die, people will always pick the other person  
>  **Tobi:** Especially if their childhood sucked. I mean, my childhood sucked, and everyone betrayed me, and /I/ always regretted giving up my life for someone  
>  **Tobi:** My experiences are clearly universal so this applies to everyone  
>  **Naruto:** *chooses himself to die*  
>  **Tobi:** *surprised pikachu.jpg*  
>  **Shikamaru:** *loud screaming*
> 
> So, the Will of Fire encapsulates a lot of what fire /is/. It's love, though it comes in many forms (key in Konoha is love expressed through personal sacrifice. The 'choice' therein is hugely important to the strength of that will. You choose your comrades over yourself without devaluing yourself, therefore your choice is strong and so is your power). It's also hatred, though, tucked into "a darkness burning". That concept is essentially anti-fire and comes from Paradise Lost's fires of Hell.
> 
> Fire is, essentially, the truest expression of relationships! Energy, chaos, life, but also the decimation of those things since fire (like water and lightning) has an inherently destructive element to it. 
> 
> Wind is quintessential freedom. Free will, further emphasizing the nature of 'choice' (Kurama and Naruto are both wind/fire affinities, making them doubly stubborn and doubly choosey, making fate hit them twice as hard). Personal freedom, found in strong independence. Freedom from bonds, deeply buried in a hatred of confinement both in itself and in others. 
> 
> Idle thoughts on this chapter: the whole 'yin' and 'yang' Kurama thing is from the anime. I personally think it's a bit silly, but it had some worldbuilding potential so I kept it. 
> 
> Other idle thoughts: Kurama is deeply offended by the idea of his container being mud because he's fire/wind and that's water/earth. The very thought is repulsive to him, lmao. The idea of mud existing in his sewer when he's already mad about the water? The idea of a toad spirit loafing around? Awful.

**Author's Note:**

> Charybdis is a whirlpool and a monster - a nymph cursed for helping Poseidon in his attempts to take over the land with the sea. She creates the tides, doomed forever to drink the sea, and her monstrous form is forever hidden below the surface. Nice.


End file.
